{"id":11269,"date":"2011-12-04T09:12:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-04T09:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/rangers-stint-has-made-me-more\/"},"modified":"2018-06-04T17:09:35","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T17:09:35","slug":"rangers-stint-has-made-me-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/rangers-stint-has-made-me-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Rangers stint has made me more confident: Chhetri"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nHe is on a goal-scoring spree, an achievement which has earned him the Arjuna Award. Team India Sunil Chhetri took time out to speak about SAFF football, the upcoming AFC Challenge Cup and his stint with Scottish giants Rangers to AIFF<\/a>.  Excerpts:<\/p>\n

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\nHow do summarize the year 2011 for you?<\/b>
\nIt has been a good year for me \u2013 quite a happening one. Besides me joining Mohun Bagan — the club from where I first started my journey from, I also some good goals for my country. The Arjuna was a huge honour for me. It has only inspired me to play better. I intend to carry all to 2012.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your take on the Indian challenge in the AFC Challenge Cup to be held in March 2012?<\/b>
\nGiven the fact that we qualified for the last edition of the Asian Cup, it\u2019s an important tournament. I\u2019m quite optimistic about our chances. I hope we get enough time to prepare ourselves for the same. If we qualify again, we would surely improve as a team.<\/p>\n

For the last few matches you have paired with Jeje Lalpekhlua upfront. How do you see the partnership going?<\/b>
\nJeje is a great talent. He has really come up of the ranks and quite fast. After Bhaichung left there was a huge space but he lives upto expectations. He is a wonderful player and has a great sense of football and uses his body to his advantage. He has a many more years ahead for him to play for India.<\/p>\n

How was your stint with Rangers. How much confident are you after the stint?<\/b>
\nI am happy that I got a chance to go to the Rangers. We couldn\u2019t train much with the main team as they had their matches. The Coach stayed a bit busy and we couldn\u2019t spend much time with him. But it was a great experience \u2013 there were quality footballers all around and it was a learning experience for me. I\u2019m a more confident player now.<\/p>\n

What are your thoughts on the Bhutan match?<\/b>
\nIt\u2019s a much-win match for us. We shouldn\u2019t have split points with Afghanistan. There\u2019s no room for any more slip-ups.<\/p>\n

The general notion stays that football in the SAFF region isn\u2019t that tough. What\u2019s your take?<\/b>
\nIt\u2019s just a notion, not the reality. Football in this region has improved leaps and bounds and there\u2019s very little difference between the teams. I take this tournament as stepping stone for us for the other higher ranked tournaments.<\/p>\n

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He is on a goal-scoring spree, an achievement which has earned him the Arjuna Award. Team India Sunil Chhetri took time out to speak about SAFF football, the upcoming AFC Challenge Cup and his stint with Scottish giants Rangers to AIFF.  Excerpts: How do summarize the year 2011 for you? It has been a good year for me \u2013 quite a happening one. Besides me joining Mohun Bagan — the club from where I first started my journey from, I also some good goals for my country. The Arjuna was a huge honour for me. It has only inspired me to play <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[169,166,1879],"class_list":["post-11269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-update","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-update","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44201,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11269\/revisions\/44201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}