Sunil Chhetri happy with junior side

Senior footballer Sunil Chhetri has urged to take positives from Indian U-23 team’s campaign in the just concluded South Asian Games. India went down to Nepal 1-2 in the final.

“I was happy with the performance. We should have won the final. But it didn’t happen it was sad. I know the fact all the boys played. You want to win (gold) medals for your country. Boys must be gutted; they must be disappointed, because in our region we don’t want to lose. We played well in first half but in the second half, Nepal came back well, played well and got two goals,” said Chhetri who scored the winner in India’s title triumph in the SAFF Cup.

“As a nation we have got to look more at positives. Lot of good performances were there and we have to build on that. Udanta Singh played well; Narayan Das did well as captain. It was good to see Sandesh Jhingan back from injury. Holicharan Narzary did well,” said Chhetri who will be the mentor and brand ambassador of a nation-wide talent hunt programme to pick 15 youngsters in the 8-14 age group for a comprehensive five-year residential schooling in Kolhapur, Maharashtra.

The programme ‘DreamChasers’ started by three retired army personnel, will impart top-class coaching and will get technical expertise by Sporting Clube de Portugal, for whose ‘B’ team Chhetri had played for a while in 2012-13.

“When I was Sporting I was 26. It was a four-year deal but I played just six games for about seven months which wasn’t enough. I was improving and enjoying my time over there with the training and the kids,” Chhetri said.

The talent hunt will be held in 15 venues and 10 cities, after kicking off here in April, to cover Navi Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Kolhapur, Baroda, Gandhinagar, Kerala, Delhi, Kolkata and Guwahati.

The selected lot would be nurtured at aresidential training centre.