As Rohit Sharma became the first-ever La Liga brand ambassador in India, he termed Mahendra Singh Dhoni as the best football player in the team on Thursday.
"MS Dhoni is the number one football player. There are few guys like Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, and Hardik Pandya they follow football and they do watch all these footballers," Rohit said during the media briefing.
Talking about the India football he said Indian Super League (ISL) has provided the base for the footballers as like what Indian Premier League (IPL) did in Indian cricket.
"I think it has become competitive. The infrastructure has grown immensely. ISL, in particular, has provided a great platform to all these younger Indian players to come out and display the skills just like IPL has done for Indian cricket. I can only see the Indian football grow from here," Rohit said.
Expressing his happiness after becoming the La Liga brand ambassador Rohit said it an honour to be part of such a high-profile league.
He further said that he has watched El Clasico many times on television and is excited to witness the clash in the stadium.
The aggressive batsman said his first love was cricket but football remained very close to his heart.
"Cricket was my love to start with. Football was very very close to me. Only because it gives me so much joy to watch all these players when they score a goal they celebrate, they make those moves on the field. Those kinds of things I used to look forward to," Rohit said.
"I always used to watch football when I was growing up. In India cricket is how football is in Spain. Everybody wants to pick up the bat and play cricket in India," he added.
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