Live India, Love Football

Humans are programmed to talk and talk and talk and talk. I’ve found that Indians especially love to hear their own voice. It’s now been over a year of working in sports in India and I’ve heard more talk about future plans, great ideas, etc… than I heard in 7 years at MLS. Now I’m all for healthy discussions and communication, however, the sad thing is that I’ve only seen 2% of this talk actually turn into action. This 98% of failure to execute rate has created a lot of pessimism and resignation within the sports industry. There were times that even I would think and sometimes say that nothing ever really gets done in this country. I now know that you can either live inside of this resignation or get into action and be the change that you want to see in this country. Fortunately, Conscient Football has provided me that opportunity to be the change. Inside of planning and executing a professionally run youth league I have learned more about grassroots programming in India than I ev...

I posted earlier about my less than extraordinary experience at the South Africa v West Indies ICC Cricket World Cup match. I kept wondering what it would have been like if I attended an India match.  As luck would have it, a friend of mine got me suite tickets for the India v Netherlands match at litterally the last second. We showed up when India was just starting to bat and I have to admit that I was extremely excited to have the opportunity to experience an India cricket match in India.  The stadium was full, the passion was contagious and the energy spread through every part of the venue. Coming from a "Fan Development" background I have to admit that Indian fans are some of the most self expressed supporters I've ever seen in any stadium for any sport in the world. However, this only lasted for about 20 minutes and then static and boredom snuck in. There were way too many lows for the 4-5 highs ...

We officially closed the Conscient Premier Football League on Wednesday, March 2nd. Here is a link to an article about the event: It was an extraordinary experience for me. The top 10 highlights include: 1. Creating the opportunity for 3000 people to watch a professional football match 2. Creating the opportunity for the CPFL participants to meet players from Churchill Brothers, Indian Arrows, ADO Den Haag FC and the HFA U-16 team 3. Seeing the excitement levels on the kids and parents faces when they came onto the field and were in the middle of all the action 4. Having Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Sachin Pilot, attend the event and participate in the awards ceremony 5. Serving as MC for the entire event 6. Having many of my friends from Delhi and a friend from the US see the event live 7. Having the new Japanese Chairman of Dentsu India, Seiichiro Hayata, attend the event and get a chance to see what our Dentsu Sports team has been actively work...

This has nothing to do with sports but figured I would post it any way. It's a short piece I wrote about a recent overnight bus ride I took to Punjab to assist at a Landmark Education event. Was quite an experience: It's Saturday night at 7:00pm and I'm on the Indian Railways website booking a ticket for an overnight train to Bathinda. I'm nervously excited about taking my first overnight train in India and assisting in the first Home Introduction in Bathinda. I click to book the 9:50pm Punjab Mail and the text reads, "Tickets for this train are no longer available." My heart sinks. All the excited energy I had minutes earlier has disappeared along with my visions of Punjabi food, Bhangra music, watching India through a train window and sharing Landmark Education with hundreds of people in Bathinda. Frustrated, I call up my coach Neha and say, "I'm not going to Bathinda, there are no more train tickets available." She says,"Do you want t...

A friend of a friend is a polo player and happens to live in a beautiful Haryana farm house with a polo ground attached.  He invited me to attend a polo match at his place which was being hosted for the Swedish Ambassador.  The combination of watching a new sport + free food + an Absolut sponsored bar was too tempting to turn down so I told him that I'd be there with a friend of mine who was visiting from the states. India is fascinating. To get to this particular farm house, you have to get off the highway, drive for about 30 minutes on a completely dug up road lined with vendors selling malnourished chickens, and then turn left down another even more beat up road until you get to a smaller dirt road that leads to a farmhouse.  Once you drive towards the farmhouse the first thing you see is massive field with grass cut finer than any other grass I've seen in India.  On the field are 12 beautiful hors...

After booking tickets for my first trip to India, the next thing I did was type “Youth Football India” into Google to see what comes up. The first link was for the India Youth Soccer Association’s website http://www.indiayouthsoccer.com/ . I clicked on it and was happy to see Indian kids in uniforms playing organized football. After doing a bit more research I learned that the Association is modeled on the same objectives as the US Youth Soccer Association and that they had been running leagues in Delhi NCR for the past year. I found the “Contact Us” link and wrote an email to Arup Das, Founder and Head of the India Youth Soccer Association . He wrote back and we set up some time to meet while I was in India. Fast forward a few months and it’s the second day of my trip to India and I’d just left the AIFF Football House in Dwarka after an interesting meeting with Mr. Alberto Colaco, then General Secretary of the AIFF. Arup is patiently guiding my taxi driver to his fields over the ph...

This is how my friends and I feel when we play football after a hearty Indian lunch!

The ICC Cricket World Cup is being hosted in India right now.  Given that after I somehow managed not to get tickets for any of the 1994 FIFA World Cup matches, I promised myself that I will attend at least one match of ANY World Cup of any sport hosted in the country I'm currently living in. This promise hadn't really been tested until the Field Hockey World Cup took place in Delhi last March. I went to two matches and had a blast.   So about a month ago, I secured tickets for the only good match being played in Delhi, West Indies v South Africa.  Given all the hype about the ICC Cricket World Cup leading up to the tournament, I caught the cricket fever and began to get excited about the match. I know that I'm typically bored out of my mind watching a full cricket match, but I thought somehow this would be different. That maybe because it is "World Cup" that the organizers would go out of their way to create an exc...

There is a perception that Indian parents are the Sports Grinch. That not only do they never want their kids to play sports because it interferes  with academics, but that they don't play sports themselves. This may be true for many Indian parents; however my experience over the weekend proved this theory wrong.  The sidelines of our Conscient Premier Football League matches are scattered with parents who love cheering their kids on every weekend. These parents are committed that their children gain all the benefits that sport has to offer and go out of their way to get their young footballers to and from matches. What was surprising though was how many of these same parents like to play football. On the final day of our league we decided to host a parents match. We had no idea what the turnout would be, but were amazed when parents of all shapes, sizes and fitness levels were playing non stop in the hot Delhi sun.  These parents were hav...