Atlético de Kolkata’s Arata Izumi is one of the key players to have brought about his team’s resurgence in the latter half of the league stage of the 2015 Hero Indian Super League, and now the defending champions are ready to take on Chennaiyin FC in the first leg of their semi-final at the Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex Stadium on Saturday night after the match was moved to Pune on account of devastating floods in Chennai. Izumi, who after returning from a brief injury scored five goals, spoke to indiansuperleague.com ahead of the match on Friday and shared his thoughts on the contest and his Hero ISL experience. Here are the excerpts.Winners last year and things seem to be on track this year too. How is the mood in the dressing room?At the moment I would say very good. All players are very confident and we are ready to fight in the first leg of the semi-final.Chennai will be playing away from home. Are ATK going to capitalise on that?This may be my personal opinion but I don’t think we will focus on this part of the game that they are playing in Pune. We have not thought about that much because there are a lot of things that we have to focus on. These things could probably go in our favour or probably go in theirs on any given day, you never know, so we won’t focus on that much. It is an equal situation for both of us.You have racked up some important goals this season that have been equally spectacular. What is the secret behind this success?I think it’s all about the team. It’s about the other players and their support and the coaching staff and their support. Of course the cheering from the supporters has been good. Everything has been amazing that I could push myself. Of course, even from my side I wanted to do well for this club this season so, so far so good and I hope it continues."I think this is one of the best leagues in the world."Arata IzumiHow has been your experience in your first Hero ISL?It is amazing. I have been playing here for nine years now [in India] and I don’t want to compare any game. But even if I take my stint in Japan and the Japanese League or the Singapore League, it’s nothing in comparison to the Hero Indian Super League in terms of set-up. It’s very exciting and you can see in all of our games, there are many fans cheering for us. I think this is one of the best leagues in the world.How would you describe playing alongside Ian Hume and Helder Postiga?These two are really great players and even great human beings and it is an honour to play with them. What can I say, they are simply great players. It even helps me to improve, playing alongside these quality players and quality human beings. I’m very lucky that I am getting to play alongside them and I am very happy that they are on our side and not our opponents.
