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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