Baichung Bhutia

About Baichung Bhutia

Baichung Bhutia is an Indian footballer of Sikkimese-Bhutia descent who plays as a striker. Bhutia is considered to be the torchbearer of Indian football in the international arena.He is often nicknamed the Sikkimese Sniper because of his shooting skills in football.Three-time Indian Player of the Year I. M. Vijayan described Bhutia as "God's gift to Indian football".Bhaichung Bhutia has an older brother named Chewang Bhutia. Chewang and Bhaichung both went to boarding school. Bhutia has opposite-sex twins.

Career:

• Bhutia caught the attention of everybody for the first time at the Subroto Cup 1992 held at Delhi, where in he was bestowed upon the Best Player award. Bhaskar Ganguly, the former goalkeeper of the Indian Football team was specially impressed by Baichungs talent and supported him to move ahead to professional Football. 
  
• At the age of 16 years, Bhutia joined East Bengal, a reputed Football club from Calcutta (now Kolkata), and further went ahead to join a yet another well known Football club, JCT Mills, Phagwara in the year 1995. The same year, JCT was able to win the National Football League after Bhutia joined them, and scored the maximum number of goals in the League for JCT. 
  
• Baichung was bestowed upon the Indian Player of the Year 1996 award. Further, he came back to East Bengal in the year 1997 and led the team in the year 1998-99. 
  
• In the Semi Final match of the Federation Cup Football 1997 played between between East Bengal and Mohun Bagan, Baichung scored a hatrick and led East Bengal win the match by 4-1. 
  
• Bhutia has been the only Football player ever to score a hatrick in a Football match between the most famous arch rivals of the Indian Football East Bengal and Mohun Bagan. The same year, he earned the recognition of being the Highest Scorer ever in any match of the National Football League. In a match against Mahindra United played on the 9th of December 1997, he scored 5 goals alone for his team JCT Mills. In the year 1999, Bhutia began playing for an English Football club named Bury F.C., and played over there till the year 2002. Upon his return to India in the year 2002, he played for Mohun Bagan AC for 1 year and then again moved back to his initial club, East Bengal and played for them until he reverted back to Mohun Bagan in the year 2006. In the meantime, he also played for Perak, a Malaysian Football club. 
  
• The 2009 Nehru Cup was significant for Bhutia, as he earned his 100th cap for India in a 2–1 win over Kyrgyzstan, becoming the first Indian player to reach this milestone.He also scored the first goal in this match to help the team recover from their opening day defeat to Lebanon.
  
• At the 2011 AFC Asian Cup in Qatar, Bhutia was injured for their first two games against Australia and Bahrain, but he came on as a second-half substitute against South Korea, but failed to save India, losing 4–1 as they were eliminated. Shortly after the Asian Cup, he announced his retirement for India on 24 August 2011 with a record of 42 goals in 107 appearances.
  

Baichung Bhutia Achievements

Honours:

• Arjuna Award for football in 1998
  
• Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India, in 2008
  
• Banga Bhushan award in 2014
  
• Asian Football Hall of Fame in 2014