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The former Uruguay international Diego Forlan, who is currently playing for the Mumbai City FC in the Indian Super League encourages other foreigners to come and play in the ISL, describing how wonderful and competitive the tournament is.
. @MumbaiCityFC's glorious run this #ISL is due to one man according to @chetrisunil11. He's @DiegoForlan7. My story https://t.co/nzwvvJcnit pic.twitter.com/q9mSymCIAF
— Noel D'Souza (@Noel2589) November 30, 2016
But the Mumbai City marquee man also insisted that 3- month’s duration Indian Super League is great for him but not for Indian football.
Speaking to the media here on Tuesday, the former Manchester United star and his teammate, Indian skipper Sunil Chhetri admitted that Indian football needs a longer league in order to development of Indian football.
As Forlan said in an interview on Tuesday,
"For me, it's great. It's good for me to come here and play for three months. I'm 37 years old, but you have to look for the future of Indian football. All leagues around the world are played for nine to ten months. In Europe, the top players play many games -around 60 games. It will be great for everyone to play one league and play the whole year, that will be an ideal scenario,"
The 37-year-old striker also added that many Indian players aren't playing in the league, and that's something that needs to change.
"Some of the Indian players can play in ISL, but not everybody. They are training which is quite different from playing. The more you play official matches, the better you become. It's that simple. Also, players shouldn't have to change teams (I-League to ISL) in one season."
The all-time highest scorer of Indian football Sunil Chhetri, sitting beside the former Uruguayan international, nodded in agreement.
"One league is going to be good and everyone who's involved with the sport in the country understands this," he said.
And when Chhetri has been asked about Mumbai City FC’s semi-final preparations,
Chhetri said,
“Being in good form, we've surely raised eyeballs aplenty so that makes our job a little tough,"
"But we know that the semifinal is a different ball-game. If we sit back thinking that our job is done, it'll be our biggest mistake."
The Mumbai based Indian Super League club, Mumbai City FC finished seventh and sixth in the first two seasons respectively, and not many would've expected them to do so well this time around.
When the Indian skipper asked about what has changed this season,
Chhetri said,
"The first season, I didn't play. In the second season we had a good team, but just lost track. This time however, we have a very able coach and coaching staff. We are in sync. We are heading in the same direction and when this happens, more often than not, we will taste success," he said, perhaps taking a dig at Nicolas Anelka, who coached the team last time around. The Frenchman had a number of fallouts with top players and was largely held responsible for the team's poor run. He concluded.