India vs Jordan: Stephen Constantine plays down rift with Chhetri, calls for focus on friendly

Indian national football team head coach on Wednesday played down the rumours of an alleged feud with star striker Sunil Chhetri, saying the team has to learn to play without him at some point.

The talk of a rift between the two has been doing the rounds for quite a while but a report claims Chhetri, India's top scorer with 65 goals in only 103 matches, asked for the axe of Constantine to the All India Football Federation a year ago.

The striker is conveniently out of India's friendly against Jordan on November 17 in Amman with an ankle injury.

When questions about the star striker popped up at Constantine's pre-departure press conference, the Englishman took quite a defensive stance.

"In case you hadn't noticed, he's injured. Stop talking nonsense, ask me the right question. You asked me the question. I told you the answer. It's nothing other than that, he's not here and can't play."

The timing of Chhetri's injury too is worrying. He was seen limping after scoring a goal against Kerala Blasters during their ISL tie on November 5, but he played the rest of the match despite the knock.

He was called up to the national team but didn't report to Delhi, citing a grade 1 tear. The 34-year old is out only for two weeks, which means he could be back for Bengaluru FC's game against FC Goa on Nov 22.

In the previous game against China, Chhetri was dropped as the captain and Constantine handed the skipper's armband to defender Sandesh Jhingan.

Constantine was probed whether the injury and the rift are related, but he rubbished the allegations. He even denied the talk about stripping Chhetri of the captaincy.

"I have rotated the captain since day one. Sunil Chhetri was captain for the Intercontinental Cup. I feel that Sandesh deserves to be captain for a couple of matches. If I have a problem with a player, do you not think I would have done something different? He has been phenomenal in internationals for India. Many others have been captain at the same time. If we have one captain, we get only one voice. When you have 4 captains, and you have 4 voices and a bigger response from the players. If I don't rotate captain, who will it be today? I am trying to develop the team from top to bottom. We have new leaders but I am not replacing Chhetri as the captain. He's one of the captains."

On asked whether he's hinting at a Chhetri-less Indian side in the near future, the Englishman pointed to Chhetri's age and hinted that India will have to learn to play without him at some point.

"Of course, he's out. He's a great player, has been fantastic over the last four years for me. He's scored more goals in his time with me than any with any other manager."

"It gives opportunities for others to step up. Hopefully, we can find a replacement. Somebody has to fill in his shoes and we'll see if they step up. We have to play sometime without him. There will be a day when he's not there. It's good if we find now so that he will be able to share his knowledge. That's why we have youngsters in the squad now. We have to find somebody right now to be there since he's not around."

"I am not hinting that he's out for India. He's 36 (Chhetri's age is 34). At some point, he's going to stop. I am trying to get young Indian strikers into the setup. There's a shortage of them because we have many foreign strikers in the ISL. Indians are playing as a right-forward or left-back. The time has come for us to find someone.

Constantine, instead, urged reporters to look at the performance of the team under him and focus on the match at hand.

"I think Jordan is a good side. They have a number of interesting players. The moment we qualified for the Asian Cup, we knew that we need to play these teams for the Asian Cup, we will be under pressure. Play long ball? I never said that. I don't tell my players to play long if they have time. If you are under pressure, do what you wanna do. If you don't wanna concede, do what you wanna do."

The match between India and Jordan will be played in the city of Amman, which has pretty similar conditions to that of UAE where the Asian Cup is going to b held in January 2019.

Also, India will be facing tough oppositions in the Asian Cup if they are to go ahead in the further stages of the tournament and games like China, Jordan and Oman are the perfect matches to be played for preparation of the tournament.

India will be facing Thailand in their first match in the Asian Cup on 6th January while they face the hosts UAE on 10th January.

In their last group match, India will be competing against Bahrain. The Blues have arguably the easiest group in the whole tournament and should be progressing to Round of 16.

The Indian team will leave for Jordan on 15th November and face them on 17th November at 9 30 PM IST at the King Abdullah II International Stadium.