German magazine “RevierSport” has published a clarification on their article which led Indian media to report on Borussia Dortmund’s “interest” to sign India captain Sunil Chhetri.

Various Indian media reported that the Bundesliga side would be interested to sign Sunil based on a report on the RevierSport website. I published a clarification [+ click here] yesterday after receiving tons of messages via eMail, Facebook, Twitter and even phone calls from India.

The original German article by Stefan Schinken just said: “The question arises whether it is really so easy to draw the attention of an entire country to a club. If yes, BVB should maybe take promising Sunil Chhetri under contract. The 28-year-old striker, who currently plays for the reserves of Sporting Lisbon would cost the club less than €1m, is popular in his country and in 61 international matches scored an impressive 36 goals – for India! There are waiting around 1.25 billion (!) potential BVB fans.”

But Indian media understood that Borussia Dortmund is actually interested to sign Sunil and the German club even received various enquiries from Indian media in the last 24 hours.

“RevierSport”, surprised by the reactions in India, published a clarification [+ click here] entitled “The sudden stardom of Sunil Chhetri” (German: “Der unerwartete Ruhm des Sunil Chhetri”).

“When irony turns serious” is one of the subheadlines of the clarification, which says that “online translators cannot understand irony.”

“Borussia Dortmund is NOT interest to sign Sunil Chhetri,” the Germans continued in their publication. “The text covered the black-yellow fever in Armenia around the signing of Mkhitaryan and it ended with a suggestion that BVB should perhaps consider to sign Chhetri, the best footballer from India, as a future prospect which could lead to 1.2 billion Indian BVB fans.”

“It was of course not meant to be serious and the article didn’t say that Dortmund would be actually interested in that player at all, which has been communicated in various translations.”

“In the meantime, BVB have received first enquiries from the ‘Times of India’, the leading English-language daily from India. But it won’t help Chhetri.”

“He can at least claim that he has been linked with BVB for one day. But he won’t play there,” the “RevierSport” clarification concluded.