Doru Isac - 'Dynamic' India more than just a cricketing nation

India Technical Director Doru Isac feels that Indians have what it takes to succeed in football and refused to label the country as just a cricketing nation. The Romanian, at a media briefing on Friday, also stressed on the importance of developing a unified structure to take Indian football a step further.

"If you ask me personally, I strongly believe in the national genes of Indians. You are very agile people, you have tempo in your movement. Don't forget you have the best dancer in the world," he stated. 

"We need to update the knowledge and coaching education which is a tremendously important job. For me, it's one of the most important things to work with the national coaching schools to develop the coaches and to be updated. We need to create that concept and philosophy as we learn to play as a nation.

"To give you an example, in an inter-village game you have 128 attacking actions and in another game in 90 minutes you have 20 attacking actions. Which one will the fans like? Of course, the one with the action."

He went on dispel suggestions that Indians are more suited to the game of cricket than football. He stressed that implementing this vision at the grassroot level is what was important.

"Some may say that you (India) are a cricket nation - no, you are a dynamic nation. What we want to create is a competitive, synchronised and a modern game. It also depends how we take this concept to the U-19, U-17, U-15 and the grassroots.

The 56-year-old is expected to work in tandem with new India coach Igor Stimac and elevate the stature of Indian football at all levels.

"We got a meeting a few days ago in Goa to discuss (how we want) to implement the way we want to play as a nation. Of course, there are principles of the modern game - synchronised or possession or power or personalities of the players - that should be implemented in the national philosophy," he continued.

He felt that India's past history suggests that the game has strong roots in the country and their task is to create an identity. Isac plans to start by incorprorating former players in his discussions.

"We need to discuss with all the people and in this panel of discussion, I am not going to talk only with the coaches now. I will invite players who played in the 70s. And trust me, I like watching a game from the 70s. In terms of the quality of the game, if you see the mispasses that were done in the 70s and now, I don't want to say what has happened now. But we have the seeds to play football in India. Now we need to create the national game concept to make us more competitive and reach the World Cup."

Isac went on to explain the ingredients he feels are required to create the envisioned strategical plans while stating that the importance of all departments working in tandem.

"You can have a strategical plans which are very well defined but we need to have the technical people that create that - from the team managers, from all the coaches from now and the coaches and players from the 70s. Let's have an objective of how you want to play the game, how you want to dance. We have the strategical plan to cover everything. Just that we need to choose the most important principles to define it and represent the nation," he reasoned.