“It's very important. To analyze yourself as a team, to know exactly where you stand is very, very important. We should not be really happy by winning just the SAFF Cup. SAFF Cup for us, without demeaning the other teams, should be an under-19 and under-23 event, where you give chances to players who you might not play. The senior team should target teams who are seventh to 15th in Asia. Then only we will know (our standard),” Chhetri told TOI.

“People who are just fans and don't know much about Indian football will always keep asking when will we qualify for the World Cup. Those questions will keep coming. But for us who are there and know more, the right way is to test ourselves against the better teams in Asia. There are 12 to 14 international friendlies (every year). We need to play those against better opponents. When we play in the Inter-Continental Cup, we must get better teams. Now, when you ask for a friendly against the UAE, it will be easier. Before the Thailand game in the Asian Cup, we had asked for friendlies against Thailand, but they refused. Thailand denying a friendly against us makes sense because they reached as far as the final stage of World Cup qualifying. They would not want to play against lesser teams.”

“I didn't speak. I regret that. It was just 45 minutes. Let's get to 10 more minutes and 10 minutes more. The more it went on, the more we believed that we will qualify. But we also realized that a goal could be coming. The more you lump the ball, the ball will keep coming back. Bahrain were not technically better than UAE. In the first two games, there was no pressure. In the third game, suddenly there was a feeling that we are going to qualify, who would have thought? That probably affected us and we kept thinking, 10 minutes, 10 minutes. Also the other result (between UAE and Thailand). Anything else and we would have qualified,” the Indian striker said.