Live India, Love Football

The other day I attended a roundtable entitled, “1 st Roundtable 2012 on Importance of Sports in Education.” It was hosted by a company called Worlddidac as well as FICCI and took place in a makeshift conference room set up right in the middle of the Pragati Maidan Exhibition Hall where hundreds of organizations were showcasing their products or services to players within India’s vast education and exponentially growing industry.   I appreciated the opportunity to participate in a discussion about this topic as it is close to my heart.  Growing up in California, I was blessed with the opportunity to attend schools which took physical education seriously and showed this by providing daily opportunities to play, high quality sports equipment and coaches who understood how to create sporting environments which were conducive to growth and fun. Looking  back, it is easy to attribute much of my "success" in life from the skills I developed on my school playgrounds...

Awhile back I wrote about how I’ve seen more live non-football professional sporting events while living in India than I had seen in my entire 29 years in the US.  It was a big surprise to me when I realized this as it was something I never expected to happen prior to moving to India.  So now I have been surprised again.  I’ve realized that I’ve become closer to more US professional athletes while living in India than I had in my 29 years in the US. It’s not that I’ve met more US professional athletes while over here, it’s that I’ve been able to build a better relationship with the ones I have met. I never could have predicted this, but now looking back I’ve realized that it’s quite simple.  There are not a lot of people who have worked in the US professional sports industry and then chosen to live in India. Given that and the fact that the sports industry is surprisingly small, I get the opportunity to connect with a number of US professional athletes who c...

I recently attended 10 football matches being played by professional clubs or countries all within a span of 11 days. No I didn’t take a European tour or another whirlwind soccer trip through the US; all of these games were watched in Delhi in 2 stadiums which are only about a dozen kilometers apart from each other. How does this happen? Well, for better or for worse the Nehru Cup and the Durand Cup were both hosted in Delhi at the exact same time. The Nehru Cup is an international tournament hosted by AIFF which has been played in India every few years since 1982.  The Durand Cup, established in 1888, is one of the oldest tournaments in Asia and is organized by the Army for India based professional clubs.  This year the Nehru Cup was hosted in Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium while the Durand Cup was hosted in Ambedkar Stadium. I had heard and read much about these competitions prior to and since moving to India, however I’m clear that there is no better education than act...