List of India national football team captains

This article lists all the captains of the India national football team.

The first India captain in their maiden international tour was Gostha Pal,^[1] organised under the control of Indian Football Association (Bengal) before the formation of All India Football Federation in 1937. The first captain to lead India in their first AIFF organised international tour was Karuna Bhattacharya,^[2][3] who captained India in their first international match against Australia on 3 September 1938.

The following table includes players who have captained the India national football team, along with the vice-captains and the international tournaments they led in.^[4][5]

List of captains

Tenure	Incumbent	Vice-captains	Tournaments/Notes	Ref
1924	Mani Das		Calcutta Indians / IFA XI IFA organised national teams	[6]
1926	Syed Abdus Samad		Calcutta Wanderers / IFA XI	[7]
1933	Gostha Pal	Sanmatha Dutta, Karuna Bhattacharya	All India XI / IFA XI 1st all-India national team organised by IFA	[8]
1934–36	Sanmatha Dutta		All India XI / IFA XI	[9]
1938	Karuna Bhattacharya		1st AIFF organised national team (India tour of Australia 1938)	[10]
1948	Talimeren Ao		1948 Summer Olympics
1949–54	Sailen Manna	Ahmed Khan	1951 Asian Games, 1952 Colombo Cup, 1952 Summer Olympics, 1953 Colombo Cup, 1954 Colombo Cup, 1954 Asian Games
1955/58	Sayed Khwaja Aziz-ud-Din		1955 Colombo Cup, 1958 Asian Games	[11]
1956	Samar Banerjee	Neville D'Souza, J. Krishnaswamy	1956 Summer Olympics
1959–60	Sheikh Abdul Latif		1959 Merdeka Tournament	[12]
1960–61	P. K. Banerjee		1961 Merdeka Tournament, 1960 Summer Olympics
1962–64	Chuni Goswami		1962 Asian Games, 1964 AFC Asian Cup, 1964 Merdeka Tournament	[13]
1965–67	Jarnail Singh		1965 Merdeka Tournament, 1966 Merdeka Tournament, 1966 Asian Games, 1967 Merdeka Tournament	[14]
1967–68	Arun Ghosh		1968 Merdeka Tournament	[15]
1969/73	Inder Singh		1969 Merdeka Tournament, 1973 Merdeka Tournament
1970	Syed Nayeemuddin		1970 Merdeka Tournament, 1970 Asian Games
1971	Chandreshwar Prasad		1971 Merdeka Tournament, 1971 Pesta Sukan Cup
1971	Arun Ghosh			[16]
1972	Mohammed Habib
1974	Magan Singh Rajvi	Ranjit Thapa	1974 Merdeka Tournament, 1974 Asian Games
1976–77	Pradip Chowdhury	Gurdev Singh Gill
1978	Gurdev Singh Gill		1978 Asian Games
1980	Prasun Banerjee	A. Devraj Doraiswamy
1981–82	Bhaskar Ganguly		1981 Merdeka Tournament, 1982 Nehru Cup, 1982 President's Cup, 1982 Merdeka Tournament, 1982 Asian Games
1982	Shabbir Ali			[17]
1982/84	Prasanta Banerjee		1984 Nehru Cup	[17]
1982	Parminder Singh			[17]
1982–83	Brahmanand Sankhwalkar		1983 Nehru Cup	[17]
1982	Pem Dorji			[17]
1982	Biswajit Bhattacharya			[17]
1982	Monoranjan Bhattacharya			[17]
1984–86/88–89	Sudip Chatterjee	Biswajit Bhattacharya, Tarun Dey	1984 AFC Asian Cup, 1985 Nehru Cup, 1986 Merdeka Tournament, 1986 Asian Games, 1985 South Asian Games, 1988 Nehru Cup, 1989 South Asian Games	[18]
1986	Atanu Bhattacharya	Mauricio Afonso	1986 Nehru Cup
1987	Abdul Majeed Kakroo		1987 Nehru Cup
1987	Babu Mani		1987 South Asian Games
1989	Mauricio Afonso		1989 Nehru Cup
1991	Bikash Panji		1991 Nehru Cup
1992	Krishanu Dey
1993–95	V. P. Sathyan		1993 Nehru Cup, 1993 SAARC Gold Cup, 1993 South Asian Games 1995 Nehru Cup, 1995 South Asian Gold Cup
1995–96/97/99	Bruno Coutinho		1995 South Asian Games, 1997 Nehru Cup, 1999 SAFF Gold Cup
1996/98/99	I. M. Vijayan		1998 Asian Games
1997	Carlton Chapman		1997 SAFF Gold Cup
1999/2001/03	Jo Paul Ancheri		1999 South Asian Games, 2001 Merdeka Tournament
2000	Roberto Fernandes
2000–11	Bhaichung Bhutia	I. M. Vijayan, Debjit Ghosh, Shanmugam Venkatesh, Renedy Singh, Climax Lawrence	2005 SAFF Gold Cup, 2007 Nehru Cup, 2008 SAFF Championship, 2008 AFC Challenge Cup, 2009 Nehru Cup, 2011 AFC Asian Cup
2001	Basudeb Mondal
2003	Debjit Ghosh		2003 SAFF Gold Cup
2005	Shanmugam Venkatesh
2009	Renedy Singh
2011	Climax Lawrence		2011 SAFF Championship
2012–2024 2025–	Sunil Chhetri	Gouramangi Singh, Gurpreet Singh Sandhu, Sandesh Jhingan	2012 AFC Challenge Cup, 2012 Nehru Cup, 2013 SAFF Championship, 2015 SAFF Championship, 2018 Intercontinental Cup, 2019 AFC Asian Cup, 2019 King's Cup, 2019 Intercontinental Cup, 2021 SAFF Championship, 2023 Tri-Nation Series 2023 Intercontinental Cup, 2023 SAFF Championship 2023 AFC Asian Cup
2015	Subrata Pal
2016/2023 2024–2025	Gurpreet Singh Sandhu	Rahul Bheke	2023 King's Cup, 2024 Intercontinental Cup
2017	Sandesh Jhingan		2017 Hero Tri-Nation Series
2018	Subhasish Bose		2018 SAFF Championship

Captains by major tournaments

• Bold indicates tournament winners
• Italics indicates tournament hosts

Player	Tournament(s)
Talimeren Ao	1948 Summer Olympics
Sailen Manna	1951 Asian Games 1952 Summer Olympics 1954 Asian Games
Samar Banerjee	1956 Summer Olympics
Sayed Khwaja Aziz-ud-Din	1958 Asian Games
P. K. Banerjee	1960 Summer Olympics
Chuni Goswami	1962 Asian Games 1964 AFC Asian Cup
Jarnail Singh	1966 Asian Games
Syed Nayeemuddin	1970 Asian Games
Magan Singh Rajvi	1974 Asian Games
Gurdev Singh Gill	1978 Asian Games
Bhaskar Ganguly	1982 Asian Games
Sudip Chatterjee	1984 AFC Asian Cup 1986 Asian Games
I. M. Vijayan	1998 Asian Games
Bhaichung Bhutia	2008 AFC Challenge Cup 2011 AFC Asian Cup
Sunil Chhetri	2019 AFC Asian Cup 2023 AFC Asian Cup