They were not in it at all. He was not in it at all. Bengaluru FC were on the backfoot, parked inside their own penalty box, trying to keep a rampant FC Goa quiet, and mostly failing. As the universe at the Fatorda entered the second minute of second half stoppage time, the score read Goa 2-0 BFC. On aggregate that score was 2-2. Extra time was looming. Bengaluru had just won a corner with their first (tame-ish) shot on target, but everything -- momentum, fans, chances, confidence -- was firmly with Goa. The corner wasn't cleared well, and the ball came back into the Goa box... ...and time stood still.
It tends to do that around this man, time. Doesn't really obey the regular laws. The whole match had been ISL on steroids, played at a pace that left everyone breathless. But in the 93rd minute, it decided to take a pause. For him.
Ball dinked in towards the far post, floating over one-two-three heads and into a clear patch of the Fatorda, uninhabited by anyone but him. Sneaking onto the path of the ball. Diving forward. Connecting with it mid-air. Ball smacking into the back of the net. The score now read 1-2 on the night, but for BFC, 3-2 on aggregate.
Sunil Chhetri. Matchwinner. Again.
That backpost header is one that he's scored a hundred times before in the past two decades, but rarely has it come more out-of-the blue, with more watch-me-stop-time pizzazz.
CAPTAIN CLUTCH! ��#FCGBFC #ISL #LetsFootball #ISLPlayoffs #BengaluruFC #SunilChhetri | @chetrisunil11 @bengalurufc pic.twitter.com/csVI3KaqzJ
- Indian Super League (@IndSuperLeague) April 6, 2025
For neither him nor BFC were in the game at all. For 90+ minutes, this ISL semifinal second leg had been run by Dejan Drazic and his Goa attack. Drazic ripped apart BFC on their right, Goa's midfield completely dominated ball and tempo and everything else (especially after Suresh Singh hobbled off with what looked a pulled hamstring), and Goa's forwards kept fluffing their lines. It remained 0-0, somehow, in the first half, but four minutes into the second, Ayush Chhetri was tripped by Sivasakthi on the line of the box - and even though the ref gave only a freekick, that was enough: Borja Herrara smash-curling one off Gurpreet Singh Sandhu's fingertips and into the corner of the net.
That goal, and the introduction of a proper #9 in Armando Sadiku gave Goa irresistible thrust. Drazic appeared to have made it two with a superb finish off a Borja through-ball but the ref had spotted an errant knee offside. It didn't stop them, though, and despite BFC defending with all their might, the pressure eventually told. A lovely Akash Sangwan cross was nodded home by Sadiku and it all looked orange and fine for the home team till Indian football decided it was 'Chhetri time' again.
Speaking after the match, Chhetri said, shaking his head, "At 2-0, phaaaaaaaaaw." He said that they simply wanted to hold on and get to extra-time and the added half hour that came with it. Goa coach Manolo Marquez was more direct, "I think they were really scared."
For all the world, it appeared they had been. In the first leg - and indeed the playoff eliminator against Mumbai - BFC coach Gerard Zaragoza had out-tactic-ed his opposite number. His skewed 4-4-2 diamond with a resolute all-Indian back four, a tempo-setting midfielder at the base, a fox-in-the-box-centre-forward as an LCM-LW hybrid, a proper central midfielder at RCM and two hard runners up top had been too much to handle, but at the Fatorda they were penned back and then some. When Chhetri came on, in the 53rd minute, they had switched to a more traditional 4-3-3 and that had done nothing to stem the flow. As scared as they might have been, though, they kept on keeping on and the man who's taken a Ph.D. in that particular artform did what he does best to power them to the 2024-25 ISL final.
He had not done much, neither in the previous two games (delightfully clipped goal against Mumbai when the game was already done notwithstanding), nor up until that point in this third game, but BFC soar into yet another final on the back of Sunil Chhetri. Of course they do. He's been having his best league season for ages -- this was his 14th, his best tally since 2017-18 when BFC first entered the ISL -- and it almost felt inevitable that it would be him who decides the course of the tie.
It shouldn't have been, but that's the Sunil Chhetri way: when he wills it, time and fate in Indian football -- more often than not -- simply bend the way he tells them to.