Produced by: Hitansh Gaur
The South Asia Football Federation (SAFF) Championship 2023 is being hosted at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru. All the matches of the tournament will be carried out at the same stadium.
The tournament’s first match was won by Kuwait as they defeated Nepal by 3-1. But it was the second match of the day India vs Pakistan at SAFF Championship 2023 that football fans were awaiting.
The second match of the day ended with Sunil Chhetri-led India winning by 4-0 against Pakistan, but the match was full of heated moments as players of both sides got into a brawl after team India’s coach Igor Stimac was shown a red card and sent off.
The incident happened when Indian coach Stimac protested against Pakistan getting a throw-in. Stimac hit the ball off the hands of Pakistani defender Abdullah Iqbal. Seeing this, players of both teams surrounded Stimac and Iqbal and some of them started pushing each other.
Even after all this, Igor Stimac was not ready to calm down and was still arguing. Then, one of the Pakistani players came towards the Indian dugout to calm Stimac down. Seeing this behaviour, the referee gave a red card to Indian coach and a yellow card to the Pakistani coach.
Credit: T Sports
Despite the drama, Sunil Chhetri maintained his cool as he led the Indian team to victory by scoring a hattrick. Chhetri scored the first goal in the tenth minute and doubled the lead by converting a penalty in the 16th minute. Chhetri again got a chance to score from the spot in the 74th minute and with that he completed his hat-trick. Udanta Singh Kumam scored the fourth goal in the 81st minute cementing the win for the host team.
With his hat-trick in the match, Sunil Chhetri took his international goals tally to 90 surpassing Malaysia’s Mokhtar Dahari to become the fourth highest goal-scorer in international football. Chhetri now sits behind Lionel Messi (103 goals), Ali Daei (109 goals) and Cristiano Ronaldo (123 goals).
Credit: T Sports
The teams have been divided into two groups of four each in SAFF Championship 2023. The teams will play three group stage matches – June 21/22 , June 24/25 and June 27/28. The top two teams of each group will play in the semi-final on July 1. The SAFF Championship final will be played on July 4.
India are the defending champions and will play two more group matches:- India vs Nepal: June 24 at 7:30 pm India vs Kuwait: June 27 at 7:30 pm