Inspiring Friend Spotlight - Arup Das

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 phone while overseeing a 100+ child league. I pull up to the school, get out of the taxi and see the always wonderful sight of kids of all ages and abilities playing football.

In the middle of the sea of kids I see Arup Das; a good hearted Bengali man with a passion for youth development though football. He gave me a background on the IYSA, showed me around the fields and introduced me to his coaches and players. What I remember most about that meeting was the challenges that Arup had to overcome to start and run the league: schools taking away the fields, overbearing parents, no corporate support, etc… However inside of all those challenges, Arup continued to put his heart into his programming for the benefit of Indian youth.

Now fast forward 3 years to 2009; I’ve just been offered a job with Dentsu Sports Marketing in Delhi and I have so many questions about living in India. The person I turn to is Arup Das, the man I’d only met twice in my life in person yet I had a ton of respect for. He guided me every step of the way in terms of explaining what my budget may be over here, what apartments I should look at, what social life is like, and so on and so forth. More importantly, when I arrived in Delhi he set up brokers to help me find apartments, fed me dinners and all around made sure I was safe and secure. From a footballing perspective, he provided me with his firsthand experience on the successes and areas of opportunity with trying to create grassroots programming in India. Knowledge that would have taken me years to gain.

Now fast forward to February 28th, 2011. I show up to a football field in Vasant Vihar and see Arup being recognized by the Director of Sports for the Delhi Government in front of 150 government school boys who look so proud wearing their uniforms. Only a few people on the pitch know that Arup single-handedly secured the land from the government, maintained it during one of the worst monsoons to ever hit Delhi and provided quality and consistent programming for these boys using money from a fund that he set up.

I’m proud to say that I’m a friend of Arup’s and know that he will continue to play a major role with development of youth in India.