Foreign Coaches in India: A Cultural Opportunity & Challenge
Within the Indian football fraternity, there is a strong belief that we need to rely on foreign coaches to improve the level of coaching within the country. I tend to agree with this belief as over the past few years, I haven’t met enough Indian coaches who have the right mix of experience and technical expertise required to produce international level players. It’s not that quality Indian coaches do not exist in India, as there are some, however it’s that there are just not enough to service the needs of a country with 1.2 billion people. What I’ve learned through experience though is that successfully bringing over a foreign coach to India and making it work is no easy task. I’ve watched our Player Representation department working around the clock facilitating these coach deals for I-League clubs and I’ve been personally involved in helping find foreign technical staff for a few of our Academies. In the beginning, I honestly thought that the hard part was just findi...