Last Night's Dinner Party

One of my friends in the industry, Shikhar Malhotra, invited me to his house yesterday evening for dinner and drinks.  It wasn't just any house nor was just any dinner. Shikhar is the son-in-law of Indian mogul Shiv Nadar who is most known for creating HCL, a massive technology company and establishing the Shiv Nadar Foundation, one of India's largest non-profit organisations.  Shikhar is an executive with HCL and a trustee with the Shiv Nadar Foundation and happens to love football which is how we have cross paths many times over the past few years.  

Given that Shikhar loves football and that his school has recently tied up with french club Paris Saint Germain, he went ahead and invited Portuguese and PSG legend Pauleta who was in town for a few days on behalf of his former club. In addition to being one of the highest goal scorers in PSG history, Pauleta represented Portugal in the 2002 and 2006 FIFA World Cups scoring a hat trick against Poland in 2002.  

I was fortunate enough to be invited to the party and thanks to my limited Spanish, I was also able to spend a decent amount of time with Pauleta discussing life at PSG, life in Portugal and the crazy Delhi traffic.  

It was an enjoyable evening celebrating football in the Nadar family's beautiful home. Also, it was another validation for me that the next generation of young, wealthy and intelligent Indian businessmen and women are seriously considering football as the sport they would most like to put their money behind, signs of a bright future for Indian football. 

Skikhar and Pauleta

With Pauleta, PSG staff Fabien and a friend of Shikhars

Comments

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...
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...
Read more

Barcelona

Image
A few months ago my client at Conscient Football and I were discussing options for an "Exposure Trip" we were planning for a group of Delhi based youth footballers.  The obvious locations came up; Manchester, London, Milan, Madrid, Munich, etc... But then Barcelona was mentioned and it was obvious that the meeting was over right then and there. There were no other options.  Barcelona is located in the country that just won the most recent FIFA World Cup, is home to the best football club in the world and home to the best football player in the world.  Why would we take the players anywhere else??? So fast forward to May 12th.  I'm at Indira Gandhi airport in Delhi with 3 other staff members meeting with 27 sets of parents and assuring them that their little princes will be fine.  I'm holding passports, collecting forms, smiling widely, shaking hands and doing my best to exude confidence and responsibility.  Somehow we get the 27 players thr...
Read more