Premier League Next Generation Cup: A Sign of India’s Importance
When I first moved to India in 2009, I was pleasantly surprised with how much the younger generation in the country - especially in tier 1 cities - loved consuming the Premier League. Every youngster I would interact with back then would claim to be the ‘biggest Manchester United supporter on the planet’ or ‘love Didier Drogba more than anyone’ or…well you get the point. I remember a few years later at a Manchester United supporters event in Delhi, I was amazed by the number of people crying while watching Sir Alex Ferguson give his going away speech on the pitch at Old Trafford. We were thousands of kilometers away from Manchester and most of the people crying had never even watched a Manchester United match live at the ground, yet they were balling like it was Sachin Tendulker’s testimonial. That’s the beauty of sport. I used to think that it was a one-way relationship. That us Indians liked the Premier League much more than the Premier League liked us. That was until I