If Bhaichung Bhutia, the first Indian footballer to play 100 international matches, is to be believed, strikers need to develop their sixth sense to score regularly.
“It’s all about that sixth sense. You need to smell it as to where it would be coming. The best strikers in the world all have that sense. You need to read situations. Unless you don’t develop your sixth sense, you won’t be a successful striker,” Bhutia explained.
“As a striker, you need to have the sense because you only get a fraction of a second to put the ball past the goalkeeper in the net. That is where strikers need to develop technically and mentally,” Bhutia said further.
Nicknamed the “Sikkimese Sniper ” due to his shooting skills, Bhaichung Bhutia has achieved the status of a legend in the field of Indian football. Referring to an anecdote where footballer Sunil Chhetri mentioned how “scoring goals was all about life and death for Bhaichung bhai”, Bhutia stressed on the importance of “making those runs every time you sense it.”
“Those runs are extremely critical for a striker. I used to keep telling Sunil that you need to anticipate and make runs from where you can score. If you go wide, you have to dribble and get past the defender, and by the time you turn and get past him, others will also rush in to block you,” he commented.
Offering advice to aspiring players, Bhutia said, “Very often strikers come to me to ask what we can do when we don’t get goals. I only tell them: no matter what, you should not stop from making those runs. If you don’t score in the first nine times and then give up, you’ll not even be near to the ball in the 10th time.” “Only once or twice out of maybe 10 situations you will get the chance to score, but you need to keep on doing it,” he explained.
Referring to other skilled footballers as examples, Bhutia said, “If you look at Ronaldo and Messi, it’s not always that they dribble past 3-4 defenders. Rather, all big strikers wait for the ball and then touch it. At the end, it’s all about developing that sense, and I repeat, unless you keep on making those runs you will never develop that sense.”
Bhaichung also mentioned Rustam Akramov shifting him from a midfielder to a striker. “I was an attacking midfielder and was used to make those runs from behind to get into the box and set myself in a position from where I could score. Those days we weren’t much tactically equipped. Not many people would teach you in which position you should play. It was all natural — that’s how I played,” he quipped.
Bhutia has been described as “God’s gift to Indian football” by another star football player, I M Vijayan, who was the three-time winner of the Indian Player of the Year title.
Bhaichung Bhutia too has received several honours, including the Arjuna Award and the Padma Shri. Among international honours, he has won the Nehru Cup, LG Cup, SAFF Championship and AFC Challenge Cup.
He began his career with the East Bengal Club and made his international debut at the age of 19. In 1999, when he joined the English club Bury F.C., he also became the first Indian footballer to sign a contract with a European club and the second to play professionally in Europe, after Mohammed Salim. He has also played for Perak FA in Malaysia, and JCT Mills and Mohan Bagan in India.
