Dream come true to become first Keralite to captain India in football: IM Vijayan

Indian football legend IM Vijayan says it was a dream come true to captain the Indian football team in a fairytale story that started with him selling soda bottles in football stadiums in Kerala.

"It is a dream for every player to captain India at some point in their career. I captained India for the first time in qualifier matches for the Asian Games. No one from Kerala had ever captained the Indian football team in an Asian Games qualifying match before that, I was proud to do that."

IM VIjayan was part of a live interaction with Sportskeeda during which he recalled many glorious moments of his career.

Discussing his 12-second goal against Bhutan in a group match of the 1999 South Asian Games, IM Vijayan said "Majeeb (Moolanchikkal) and me were playing as strikers and he was very fast, he passed the ball to me and I just hit it and it ended up in the back of the net."

Asked about his favorite goal of a glorious 19-year long club career that spanned spells in clubs like Mohun Bagan, East Bengal, JCT, Churchill Brothers and FC Kochin, IM Vijayan chose his goal against a Malaysian club while playing for JCT in Kochi. "Tajinder chipped the ball into the air and I just volleyed it into the back of the net. The scores were level 1-1 and I scored the winner in the crucial finale match", he said during the interaction.

IM Vijayan has had an interesting post-retirement career

Discussing his post-retirement film career, the 51-year old said "I have worked in a lot of films. In my first film, it got a national award. After that, I acted in many commercial Malayalam and Tamil films, some of them even had budgets of over 1 crore.

Talking about his biopic, the 51-year old said "My biopic is in the works behind the scenes. It will be in Malayalam, Tamil, and hopefully Hindi as well. I am hoping that they will cast a good actor in my role."

IM Vijayan's career spanned 19 years.