‘Dariya ko rok nahi sakte’: Gurpreet Singh Sandhu on his stirring India comeback, Chhetri’s advice and Khalid’s rallying cry

No goalkeeper has played more matches for India than Gurpreet Singh Sandhu. No goalkeeper has kept more clean sheets than the 33-year-old and his penalty shootout heroics are well known. Whether it’s the trophy-winning diving saves against Lebanon or Kuwait in the 2023 SAFF Championships or the final crucial stop against Oman recently to fire India to a memorable bronze on their CAFA Nations Cup debut. When it comes to clutch situations, Gurpreet becomes the ultimate clutch player.

But there’s just one problem. When his form dipped last season, Gurpreet was not only benched but also shown the door by former manager Manolo Marquez. Losing a place in the starting XI in an international team isn’t the biggest deal; it’s the country’s best line-up, but for a senior 33-year-old to lose his place altogether in the squad, to be told that you are no longer among the best goalkeepers in the country without any clear explanation, was too big a blow. It put him at the crossroads.

“Getting dropped from the national team, this has happened to everyone. But for me, it was kind of different because I was not 23 anymore or I was not 20, where, you know, I had not done anything yet,” Gurpreet told Firstpost.” You know, this time it was a bit different because I’m 33, or I’ve played, you know, a good amount of games for the national team and I’ve done a lot of things as well.

“I felt like at this point, when you get dropped from the national team, like not from the 11, you get dropped from the squad as a senior player who was made captain literally six months ago, you know, so what are you supposed to do? Like, is this it?

“Should I just call it a day? Like, am I not doing enough? Maybe I don’t have the thing that everyone wants. That’s why I’m not there. It was a very hard time, to be honest, because you don’t get to make peace with it.

“You want to say a lot of things. But you can’t, you need to wait for the right moment. And that’s what I did at that time, wait for my time.”

His time in international football came soon after missing the March and June games, as he made a comeback under new coach Khalid Jamil, the first Indian to hold the position since Savio Madeira in 2012.

In a recent interview, Khalid claimed that Gurpreet is the best player in India and one of the best goalkeepers in Asia. The 48-year-old was determined to have him in the team, which eventually led to a fairytale comeback for the Bengaluru FC player.

Gurpreet saved a penalty in India’s win over higher-ranked Tajikistan in the CAFA Nations Cup and denied the final attempt in the shootout against Oman to help India notch another victory over a higher-ranked side.

Remember the name Gurpreet Singh Sandhu💪🏻

Gurpreet Paaji The Wall 🇮🇳 won us the bronze medal in CAFA Nations Cup😭#CAFANationsCup2025 #INDOMA #indianfootball https://t.co/StkYRnzcI4 pic.twitter.com/vsMkiMcFat

— Bruce Wayne (@_Bruce__007) September 8, 2025

Gurpreet, however, doesn’t feel that his comeback is anywhere close to an improbable comeback, as his form was never as bad as it was made out to be.

While he admits to making mistakes, he says only the worst was highlighted, which wronged him and the performance that he was putting in.

“I am also kind of pissed off because a lot of people made it look like I was bad the whole season. A lot of people made it look like that. Be journalists or social media posts or other pages. So out of the 30-odd games I played, you can point out five games, four or five games in which I was subpar or not good enough. So because of five games, people are saying that I had a sh*t season, like I was terrible.

“And that’s where I get to know that these guys have not seen the whole match. They have not seen the whole season. They have just seen the highlight reels where mistakes are shown,” Gurpreet said from his Bengaluru residence.

“You know, they don’t see the penalty save against Vietnam away. They don’t see the five or six clean sheets in the beginning. They don’t see the important saves against FC Goa in the (Indian SUper League) semi-finals. They don’t see the performance in the Super Cup against Inter Kashi because that’s normal for Gurpreet. But it’s not normal for me to have five bad games in a season.

“You can say that he was okay, average and then had a slump and then he was back to normal again. But I don’t think that I had a terrible season. A lot of people just made the narrative a complete redemption arc, like the man has come from the pits to the top.”

Nonetheless, the exile from the national team, his first since 2017, left him with a wake-up call, that things can be “taken for granted,” but the bigger worry for the decorated goalkeeper was whether he was doing all that he could to be the best in the business.

Chhetri’s advice and Norway trip

That’s when he spoke with his club teammate, close friend, and Indian legend Sunil Chhetri. The message was clear: go back to the basics and rediscover your best.

“People like Sunil bhai spoke with me as well and he said the same thing. Go to the gym, go to the pitch, do extra work because that’s the only thing that you can do. And because he has had an illustrious career and such an experience career, he has also had his ups and downs. And from experience, he shared something with me as well. And I tried to do that and thankfully things changed…Thankfully, things changed, but I feel like you can’t take things for granted.

“But, you know, the main focus is to make sure things like this, when they happen, you deal with it the right way and not in a unprofessional way, which I’m glad that I did.”

With no football going on in India, Gurpreet decided to go back to his former club Stabæk Football in Norway, where in 2016 he became the first Indian to play in a Europa League match.

“The reason I went to Norway was because when I come back to India, I wanted to look myself in the mirror and be like, did I do justice to myself? You know, when I didn’t get selected for the national team, obviously, you feel like you’re not good enough. And I just wanted to escape that feeling. So I went there for myself. I didn’t go there thinking I’ll come back a different beast and, you know, a few months of training will change everything.

“I should come back and feel better. I feel when I look at myself, I don’t doubt myself anymore. Like I have the tools that I needed. I have the push that I needed from the right person. In Norway, I was not thinking about the national team. I went thinking that pre-season will start for ISL and I wanted to be in better shape. But when I came back, things were a bit different.

“I wasn’t thinking about whether I would get a national call-up or not. Who will be the coach? I have not worked with Khalid sir, before. We’ve just played against each other and it’s not like we’ve spoken to each other before or after games. I don’t know how he is. He doesn’t know how I am. I don’t know his opinion of me, you know, he has never said anything about it before. So I had zero expectations.

“When the call came, I was not pleasantly surprised, but was relieved somewhere.”

This is where Gurpreet pointed out that his return to the Blue Tigers squad felt like destiny after all the hard work he had put in on the pitch, something equally valued by new coach Khalid, despite the two barely knowing each other.

“You know dariya ko rok nahi sakte (you can’t stop the river). What has to happen, will happen. You can delay things a bit, but you can’t stop it. So it felt like it was written somewhere that it would happen (national team return). I am very thankful to Khalid sir for calling me first. When you show respect, you get respect. It makes me respect him as well.”

What makes Khalid Jamil such an efficient manager?

But besides handing him a call-up, what are the other aspects of Khalid’s coaching that have impressed Gurpreet? In his own words, the former NorthEast United and Jamshedpur FC coach’s professionalism and tactical astuteness give a good idea of why he has been the trailblazer as an Indian coach in the ISL. Besides being the first India to coach a team full-time in ISL, Khalid also took Jamshedpur to the Super Cup final and ISL semi-final last season, eventually securing the biggest football coaching job in India after the Blue Tigers failed to win their first two AFC Asian Cup 2027 Qualifiers under Marquez.

“I was very pleasantly surprised. He has a lot of preparation and he does a lot of one-on-one meetings with the players on what he wants from them, tactically. And he has a lot of meetings, group-wise, also team meetings, tactical sessions.

“So I was very happy to see that, you know, an Indian coach is taking command like that and making sure that we are preparing in such an organised manner.”

Once the CAFA Nations Cup camp began in Bengaluru in mid-August, the clarion call from the coach and senior players was clear: fight for the team, fight for the shirt, fight for the country, and give your best on the pitch.

Gurpreet reveals that senior defender Sandesh Jhingan, who played the match against Iran with a cheekbone injury, and that coach Khalid played a big role in rallying the team’s morale and helping them forget the bad memories from March and June.

“Firstly, I have to give credit to Sandesh because he is one of those main guys who rubs this off on people. You know, we have to go with the mindset of winning and from him I pick it up and I try to say it every time, you know, in a meeting. You have to say it out in the open, and then only subconsciously it will keep coming to your mind. If you don’t talk about it, if you don’t believe it (it won’t happen). It doesn’t matter how stupid it may look, you have to say that. At least try. That was the main message in the camp this time, especially from the coach, Sandesh, from myself, Suresh (Wangjam), Rahul Bheke, that guys we are not here to just participate.

“We are an afterthought in this tournament, but go with the mentality that we are not here merely to participate. Doesn’t matter who the opponents are, we have to enter the pitch with the feeling that we want to win this game, rather than the feeling that another match has come, or I have to play again… you can either look at it as a task or you can see it as an opportunity to play for India, it makes a difference. Thankfully, we looked at it as an opportunity; we did well against Tajikistan, Oman, and even against Iran, we did well, if only we could have kept a clean sheet till 70-80 mins, anything could have happened.

“We were not worried that the salary wasn’t coming. We were only thinking about playing for the national team. A lot of credit goes to the coach, who kept us focussed only on CAFA, made us forget everything else.”

All eyes on Asian Cup qualifiers now

While the CAFA Nations Cup was a memorable star for Khalid and Co, a bigger challenge awaits, including the two Asian Cup final round qualifiers against Singapore in October. The camp for the same began on Saturday in Bengaluru.

Gurpreet, who is back as India’s captain, wants the Blue Tigers to move from the CAFA Nations Cup success and focus on the upcoming matches.

“I don’t remember the last time we as a national team went outside to play a tournament and ended up with a medal. So it’s a pretty big achievement. But obviously, we have bigger things on the agenda, which is trying to get to the Asian Cup.

So, although good things have happened. We can’t lose focus and just keep remembering the good days. When it matters, hopefully, everyone is ready and we get the good results and move on.”

While the banishment from the national team and the subsequent memorable comeback have made Gurpreet more determined, he hasn’t lost his sense of humor. When a reporter mentioned that they might meet at the 14 October game against Singapore in Margao, Goa, his tongue-in-cheek reply was: ‘Hopefully, I’ll be there too.

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