Sunday, 18th September 2022, was the final of the 2022 Durand Cup at the Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata. It’s a major event on the Indian football calendar and last night, it was Bengaluru FC against Mumbai City FC in the final. The former was being led by ace Indian footballer Sunil Chhetri who has achieved many highs in his professional career so far.
Yesterday saw another feather being added to his cap as he led Bengaluru to a 2-1 win over Mumbai and was crowned champion of the Durand Cup. However, there was a brief minute of ‘disrespect’ being shown to our football star, as he was shoved aside by a highly esteemed political entity during the post-match presentation ceremony.
Sunil Chhetri gets pushed by La Ganesan
Present at the ceremony were many political leaders, including West Bengal Governor, La Ganesan. Chhetri was called upon to collect the trophy and while he should’ve been the center of attention because he just won the trophy, it was the governor who wanted a whole lot of the limelight, even slightly shoving Chhetri and gesturing that he moves away, so as to as be a part of the limelight.
The move was deemed to be super disrespectful, and Ganesan has now become the center of a number of memes and jokes on social media, not even 12 hours after this incident took place in Kolkata. It’s caused a major uproar among netizens and they’re all demanding a public apology from the politician, who was clearly more interested in the photo opportunity than handing over the trophy to Chhetri.
Being the good sportsman that he is, Chhetri played it down and moved to the side, without making it to be much of an issue. However, a few moments earlier, this was repeated by another guest at the presentation ceremony, who pushed aside Sivasakthi Narayanan during a photo opportunity. Narayanan scored the opening goal of the night and as also treated with a whole lot of disrespect.
This is what happened with shivshakti minutes before Chhetri. pic.twitter.com/TZmLP93Sdj
— Akansh (@AkanshSai) September 18, 2022
A number of top sportsmen reacted to this video and condemned this disgraceful act by the members of the presentation party. Among them was recently retired Indian cricketer Robin Uthappa. He posted a tweet on the matter, saying, “🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️thats just all sorts of wrong!! Sorry @chetrisunil11 you deserve so much better than this!!”
There was a time when politicians enjoyed more of the limelight than players in cricket too, but that has changed today and we hope that this moment turns out to be a turning point for Indian football too. Everything about it was wrong, especially since we often put up Chhetri’s name along with the likes of Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and others.
For similar updates on football and for similar sports news from around the world, keep reading ReadScoops.com…
Register on Parimatch and get a massive 150% welcome bonus
