Sunil Chhetri not called up for national camp, Gurpreet returns.
Sanchita Chatterjee, BS News Agency New Delhi: Indian football team's new coach Khalid Jamil has called 35 footballers to the Bengaluru camp for preparations for the CAF Nations Cup. Of them, 22 joined the camp on Friday, but 13 have not joined yet. It is assumed that these 13 will join after finishing their club games in the Durand Cup. The camp in Bengaluru will continue till August 25. After that, the Indian team will leave for Hisor on August 29 to play the first match of the group against Tajikistan. The opponent will be Iran in the second match on September 1. The opponent will be Afghanistan in the last match on September 4. The final will be in Tashkent on September 8. The third and fourth place decider matches will be in Hisor.
The 22 players who have joined the camp are Amarinder Singh, Gurpreet Singh, Ritwik Tewari (goalkeeper), Akash Mishra, Alex Saji, Boris Singh, Chinglesana Singh, Mingthangmaiwa Ralte, Rahul Beke, Roshan Singh, Sandesh Jhingan, Sunil Benjamin (defender), Ashiq Kurunyan, Danish Farooq, Nikhil Prabhu, Rahul KP, Suresh Singh, Udanta Singh (midfielder), Irfan Idwad, Lalianjuala Chante, Rahim Ali, Vikram Pratap (forward).
Goalkeeper Gurpreet and forward Rahim Ali are likely to return to the national camp, but Sunil Chhetri is not included in the list. Previous coach Manolo Marquez had retired and included Sunil in the national team. Sunil's name is not on Khalid's possible list. So can it be assumed that Sunil has finally retired from the world of football for good?
Keeping in mind the importance of the CAF Nations Cup, the federation has requested the remaining 13 footballers from Mohun Bagan SG, East Bengal, Jamshedpur FC, and North East United to join as soon as possible after the Durand expedition is over. They are: Aniruddha Thapa, Deepak Tangri, Apuya, Liston Colasso, Manveer Singh, Sahal Abdul Saman, Vishal Kaith (Mohun Bagan), Anwar Ali, Jackson Singh, Mahesh Singh (East Bengal), Manveer Singh Jr., Albino Gomes (Jameshdpur), Jitin MS (North East).