Barclays Premier League Live – Another Sign of Indian Football’s Transformation

The Indian football landscape has transformed over the past 2 years and the Premier League has certainly woken up to the power of this country.  Not only has India proven to the world that it loves and appreciates global football, the industry has finally figured out how to welcome and accommodate large profile foreign football programming hosted on its soil. The past few days are a perfect example of this.

Thanks to our relationship with the Asian Development Football Project and our association with the ONE GOAL campaign we were invited to be a part of the Barclays Premier League Live event. The event, organized by the Premier League, was intended to bring the excitement of the world’s most popular league directly to the global football community. 

The whole experience was positive and a privilege for any football supporter or administrator to attend.  The event started with a 4 hour workshop offered to the Indian football community where Premier League management presented information on a number of administrative areas intended to educate key stakeholders within our industry.  Post that, we headed over to the MMRDA grounds and were treated to a celebrity match between Bollywood Celebrities and Premier League legends which included Abhishek Bachchan, Ranbir Kapoor and Robbie Fowler and Emile Heskey respectively.

The next day was spent on the MMRDA grounds interacting with thousands of Indian football supporters while we collectively enjoyed the sights and sounds of the Premier League and its clubs promoting themselves through giveaways, trivia, celebrity appearances and other means.  In the evening we watched the Kerala vs Chennai ISL semifinal on one massive screen and an EPL match on another while we drank free Carlsberg beers, munched on scrumptious food and talked about how much we love our lives. 

My role in all of this was to run a session on football and nutrition for local kids in the community on the 5v5 pitch situated in the middle of the fan park.   Although the session was only an hour long, it actually took weeks of planning, coordinating with local community coaches, designing and printing branding materials and putting together the media plan.  It was totally worth it as I not only had the opportunity to educate 20 youth on nutrition, I was fortunate enough to be considered a partner and a part of the Premier League’s 3 day party in Mumbai.

I can’t even begin to describe how much the relationship between foreign football entities and India has transformed over the past 5 years of me living in this country.  I remember when I first arrived it was big news if 1 foreign coach representing an international club arrived and led a multi-day training session in a remote area of the country at the expense of some rich and passionate Indian.  Now not only is the biggest league in the world taking over an entire section of corporate Mumbai for 3 days at their own expense, but 11 clubs and legends are tagging along also on their own dime.  And the beautiful thing is that our friends from the UK could justify their resource expense, because India delivered over 30,000 die-hard Premier League supporters during the 2 days of the fan park. 

I keep staying this, but the future is bright for Indian football and I’m blessed to have seen some of its darker days so I can truly appreciate these moments when the dawn is certainly breaking on this exciting industry.














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