A Sunday Night Watching Football & Grown Indian Men Cry

On Sunday night I attended an event called #I AM UNITED which was hosted by Manchester United and Airtel at the spacious Blue Frog lounge in Delhi. The purpose of the event was to bring together thousands of die-hard United supporters in India for an evening of football viewing (Manchester United vs. Swansea), drinking (open bar all night) and paying respect to one of the greatest coaches of all time (obviously Sir Alex Ferguson).

From what I had heard, somewhere around 15,000 people had registered for tickets online and, in the end, only 2,500 die-hard United supporters were able to get in. I’m not a United supporter however I attended the event as a guest of the Manchester United Soccer Schools and was genuinely excited to be there as I love Blue Frog, was looking forward to watching the match and was interested in being around so many of Indians who are passionate about a club which plays its matches thousands of miles away from their country.

I arrived at 7:00pm thinking I was going to be one the first ones there, but entered the gate surprised to see t over 1,000 people dressed in red scattered all over the venue. I soon found my friends from Nike and Manchester United Soccer Schools and engaged in catch up conversation while also trying my best to digest the madness of what I was seeing around me. People of all ages, shapes, sizes, classes were everywhere singing, laughing and just genuinely happy about life.  I quickly concluded that it would be almost impossible for any other football club in the world to generate this many passionate supporters at a football viewing party in Delhi or anywhere else in India especially relying solely on social media for promotion.

The rest of the evening went by the Manchester United playbook. A late Rio Ferdinand goal sealed the victory for Sir Alex Feguson’s last home match. Fergie made a classic and powerful on-pitch speech thanking his players, staff and supporters and finally Manchester United were awarded the much deserved Premiership trophy in front of their raucous home crowd.  I enjoyed the evening experiencing and discussing the beautiful game’s potential in India with friends from AIFF, MUSS, Nike, The Football Link and Amity University.

My favorite part of the whole evening were the tears. Most people can fabricate laughter, can fabricate anger, but very very few can fabricate tears. And on Sunday night I saw so many grown men crying while Sir Alex Ferguson was on the big screen saying his good byes to all of the faithful supporters. I’ve actually never seen a grown man cry in India even though every day we all see so many things which could bring even the toughest man to tears, however on Sunday night tears of Indian men were flowing for a Scotsman who has decided to stop coaching his UK based club after 26 years.  Humans are truly funny beings.






Comments

  1. Raisul IslamMay 12, 2014 at 12:17 AM

    This post is great.it is important post for football.This post give me more information for football.This site give me opportunity for football match live see online. I like this post very much.live football

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

3 Cities, 3 Football Academies

Image
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to visit a few of the top youth football Academies in India.  It’s always interesting to see first-hand some of the blood, sweat and tears football administrators are investing into the future of the sport in the country.  Not to mention, I love experiencing different cultures, norms and idiosyncrasies in each place I visit (there are many).  I won't get too deep into my personal adventures and challenges of traveling through West Bengal and Punjab in the insanely hot month of May.  I'll need to save those for another blog.   I've included the places I’ve visited with some pictures. Pailan World School (Kolkata) http://www.pailanworldschool.com/ Workers putting in artificial turf for the new FIFA Youth Academy Chandigarh Football Academy http://chandigarh.gov.in/dept_sports7.htm The hostel where the CFA players live YFC Rurka Kalan (Rurka Kalan, Punjab) http://yfcrurka
Read more

Liverpool International Football Academy Coaches – Ray Curtis and Michael Rice

Image
The last half of 2013 was one ongoing conversation about the proposed partnership between Liverpool Football Club and our client DSK Group.  We all knew that only good could come out of this relationship, however we also knew that the level of good would be contingent on the coaches which Liverpool FC selected to represent the Academy in India.  This point couldn’t be hammered home any harder as I’ve seen countless projects fail in India due to the international club’s inability to identify the right type of coaches to make the trip to India. It’s not that these coaches lacked technical expertise or coaching ability, actually that’s never the case, it’s that they lacked a positive attitude and patience.  I actually wrote a post about this which can be found a few months back.  The coaches selected to run the Liverpool International Football Academy DSK Shivajians, Ray and Michael, were handpicked by a trusted member of the Liverpool FC international programming staff.  He had alr
Read more

Dreams Do Come True - International Book Tour

Image
It was March 2020 when I started writing a book about my eventful career journey and the philosophy I chose to apply as I made decisions along my professional pathway. It was the early days of the pandemic, and my wife and I were staying at a friend’s beautiful farmhouse in Lonavala – a quaint hill station two hours’ drive from Mumbai. During those days, I would wake up early, exercise, chant while walking in nature, make a cup of coffee, sit in one of the comfy chairs facing a nearby mountain, pull out my laptop, put on my headphones, turn on my favourite tunes and start typing.  I relished the process of taking the memories, beliefs, insights and lived wisdom that resided in my head and heart and excitedly placing them onto the Microsoft Word document. It was therapeutic, exhilarating and addicting – creating something that did not exist before. Thanks to the online Masterclass course on how to write non-fiction led by renown author Malcolm Gladwell that my wife purchased for me for
Read more