Major injury blow to the national team: Chhetri will miss the match against Iran
TEAM INDIA HAS suffered the worst possible setback ahead of their trip to Iran; the toughest match of their World Cup Qualifiers campaign.
Sunil Chhetri, the captain and striker-in-chief for the Blue Tigers, reported some ache yesterday in the training and as a result today, when the national team lined up in Delhi airport to board the train to Tehran, Sunil wasn't among them.
An understandably devastated Sunil Chhetri said on the AIFF official website,
“I was sitting at my room trying to recall as to when I last missed a National team match for injury. It’s so disappointing. It’s such an important match for us and I still can’t believe that I would be missing it.”
Coach Constantine, always the stoic in such situations, said,
"He will be badly missed."
And that's something of an understatement.
This means that India are now missing almost all their key goal-scorers; with Robin Singh and Eugeneson Lyngdoh already out of the team for a long time with injuries of their own. Jeje Lalpekhlua is the only regular striker left in the 22-man squad that will play against Iran.
It's unclear how bad Sunil's injury is and whether or not he will be fit for the home game against Turkmenistan on 29th March.
The 22 players who did make it on the flight to Tehran are as follows:
GOALKEEPERS: Subrata Paul, Gurpreet Singh Sandhu, Karanjit Singh.
DEFENDERS: Aiborlang Khongjee, Augistine Fernandes, Arnab Mondal, Pritam Kotal, Sandesh Jhingan, Narayan Das, Lalchhuanmawia.
MIDFIELDERS: Pronay Halder, Bikash Jairu, Cavin Lobo, Rowlin Borges, Francis Fernandes, Harmanjot Singh Khabra, Udanta Singh, Vineet Rai, Seityasen Singh.
FORWARDS: Jeje Lalpekhlua, Sumeet Passi, Halicharan Narzary.
