India's First Beach Football Tournament
Two of my favorite things in the world are going to the
beach and football so needless to say that the concept of beach football ranks
high in my book of pleasures. I prefer playing, but am perfectly comfortable watching
given that typically spectators at a beach football event get to enjoy
beautiful scenery, a cool breeze, fun music and nice cold drink while taking in
the action.
India is a country full of beaches, some beautiful and some
unfortunately littered with trash, stray dogs and feces. These beaches exist
along the coastline of the entire country with the well known beaches existing
in the Southwest primarily in places like Mumbai, Goa and Kerala. I’ve fortunately been to many of the more
popular beaches in India and have always been pleasantly surprised to witness
youth enjoying a game of football on some patch of the beach. It helps
football’s cause since playing cricket is virtually impossible on sandJ
Even with the interest of beach football in these coastal
locations, no corporate has stepped up and organized a high profile beach
football tournament as seen in many other parts of the world. Since I moved to India 3.5 years ago, many
people have discussed the idea but nobody has actually put it all together to
host India’s first beach football tournament….until now.
TransStadia, an event management and infrastructure company,
based in Mumbai secured the rights to organize FIFA sanctioned beach football
events a few years back. Then, after
some deliberation, this organization finally announced and executed a multi-day
knockout tournament and music festival on the sands of Calangute Beach, Goa.
Fortunately I was in Goa to meet my client Sesa Football
Academy during the first two days of the event and was able to catch a few
matches on both nights. My initial
reaction to the event was positive. There was healthy competition, the stadium
looked nice, decent stands and crowd, lively music, multiple sponsors and the
event was running on time. There were
comments made by some people in the industry that it looked amateur, not
“hi-fi” enough for a company like TransStadia who blew people away a few months
back with their World Series of Boxing event hosted in Delhi.
I completely disagree
with these comments. I felt that the scale of the event was exactly where it
needed to be given the current state of the Indian football industry and I
applaud TransStadia for doing something that so many other organizations in
India haven’t been able to do……turn concept into reality.
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