Olivier Dacourt is no stranger to India. The former Everton, Leeds United, Roma and Inter Milan star who trained under Jose Mourinho, visited India last year while working on a thesis on Indian football. The former France international midfielder was back for the International Player Draft of the Hero Indian Super League (ISL) in August as an expert analyst. In between commenting on the merit of various clubs’ picks, Dacourt shared some of his insights with indiansuperleague.com in an exclusive conversation. Here are some excerpts…How did you come to be associated with the ISL and the International Player Draft?I have been working with the IMG (International Management Group) all through my career, so it was quite normal to be associated with this project. When I first heard about it, I was taken aback; for me, the project is unbelievable. India is a fantastic country, it’s huge and has a huge population. So when you move about from Mumbai to Delhi to Kolkata for the matches, it is going to be a huge adventure. When you speak about India, you speak about cricket, you speak about kabbadi, but not football, but now all that will hopefully change and football will get primacy.What do you have to say about the International Player Draft?I have never seen a player draft in my life before. I am happy and proud to be part of this project. The international players that we have here constitute a good mix of experienced and talented youngsters and they will bring quality to the teams that have picked them. The ISL will be particularly exciting to watch because there are so many talented (foreign) strikers who will be seen in action during the tournament.How do you see the ISL shaping up?I hope all the Indian people will support the ISL. It will be an exciting league and we will have plenty of experienced foreign players playing in it along with talented young foreigners. I hope the people will come out to see the games because football is all about passion. I’m sure it will help Indian football to develop and progress and it can be a big leap forward.How can the ISL help Indian football?This is a good chance for Indian players to play alongside these experienced foreign players and under good foreign coaches. I am sure the young Indian players will have a lot to learn from their experienced foreign counterparts and they will benefit by the experience.France’s young squad put up a good show in the recent World Cup. How do you compare this squad with the one you played with in the early 2000s?It’s a difficult question because we are talking about different eras. This was a young team who worked hard and did well. In our time we had many star players in the team and I was lucky to be part of it.You’ve played with Zinedine Zidane. How would you describe him?He was unbelievable. You cannot explain it, because he was not a football player, he was someone from another planet.
