Live India, Love Football

Happy New Year! I finally went back to the “western world” after 14 straight months in India. It was amazing spending time with my friends and family in New York, Los Angeles and London and much happened on the trip. However since this is a sports blog, I’ll stick to some of my sports conversations and experiences while I was in the US and London. New York While in New York, I was fortunate enough to spend quality time with all my old friends at the Major League Soccer league office. I was nervously excited walking back into the office I spent most of my 20s in and seeing people who are much more than colleagues. I felt at home within those buzzing walls and had the opportunity to have a chat, lunch or dinner with many of the senior staff at the league including Commissioner Don Garber and MLS President Mark Abbott. One another day I went uptown to Columbia University to sit down with US Soccer President Sunil Gulati, then downtown to SOHO to visit the NY Cosmos office and see s...

For those of you that remember, I ran the Delhi Half Marathon last year and it was quite an adventure. I had only moved to India a few days before the race took place so the race was sold out and I had to buy some random guy’s number off of him right before the race started. Also, I was completely out of shape and jetlagged so I walked at least half of the 21km in excruciating pain. My blog post about this experience can be found at the beginning of my blog.  So fast forward a little over a year and it’s a completely different scenario. After my few week stay at Max Hospital back in July/August, I didn’t think that there was any chance for me to run the half marathon. Not only had I never fully run more than10 miles straight in my entire life, I was sickly, out of shape and about 12 pounds less than I should have been (not in a good way). Then I picked up the Times of India one morning in September, read that registration was open for the November 21st half marathon and decided t...

The funny thing about a dream is that you can’t strategize exactly how you are going to fulfill it. Dreams, by definition, are meant to be lofty and, at times, a bit abstract. The important thing is to remember that all you can do is know your dream, share your dream, visualize your dream fulfilled and always be a clearing for people to come into your life that have similar dreams. For the past 4 years, I’ve been telling anyone who wants to listen to me that my dream is to create a sustainable infrastructure for soccer to develop in India. Thanks to Dentsu and Conscient Group, I’ve been provided with the opportunity to begin to fulfill that dream. Our collective team created the Conscient Premier Football League. This is the pilot program of an organized youth soccer league that is based on the best practices found in youth leagues around the world. The focus is on creating a positive environment for youth to learn and play soccer www.conscientfootball.in. We launched the league ...

In addition to sport being the great unifier it is also the great justifier. This statement is explained through my recent experiences below. My yoga teacher invited me to join him and his family on their trip to each of their respective villages to celebrate Diwali. I said “Yes,” of course, and spent the last 3 days experiencing true rural India Haryana village style. Since this is a sports blog I will leave out the details of the excitement of milking my first Buffalo, the unique experience of being the first foreigner to ever visit these two villages and the simple beauty of life in an Indian village. I must say that it was incredible gaining a firsthand look at why Haryana villages produced the majority of Boxing and Wrestling medalists at the recent Commonwealth Games. These village men grow up in a culture of hard manual labor, eat protein rich vegetarian diets and drink more thick Buffalo milk in a day than one would think possible. This combination creates s...

Here is a picture of me and a buddy of mine JD Walsh. We met through a mutual friend in NY a few months before I moved to India. I remember having drinks with him on the Empire Hotel rooftop in Manhattan while he showed me a massive folder of press clippings of his basketball clinics in India.  He has made countless trips to India over the last few years and has taught thousands of coaches and players some of the more technical skills found in basketball.  We caught up the other day and it was great to share our respective experiences of growing sport in this country.  He is a good guy, a good friend and I wish him the best with fulfilling his dream to develop future basketball stars in India. Here is a link to his site http://jdbasketball.com/

 Last week I discussed the good, the bad & the ugly of my 2010 Commonwealth Games experience. This week was a 180 degree turnaround. I attended diving, field hockey, athletics and the closing ceremonies. In addition, I had the treat of going on a private tour of the Athletes Village which culminated in an entertaining concert by Punjabi musician, Daler Mehendi. It was truly one of the best spectator sports weeks I’ve ever had AND one of the best cultural weeks I’ve ever had. I genuinely believe that whether you are a fan of sports or not, watching sporting events in the countries you travel to provide an entertaining and interesting look at the culture of that specific area. This week I will focus on the positives of my 2010 Commonwealth Games experience with the Good & the Great. The Good 1. Getting into Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in 15 minutes for athletics opposed to the 45 minutes it took to get into the opening ceremonies last week 2. Watching the Indian 4x100 m...

 Over the past few months in Delhi, the one subject discussed more than the extreme weather has been the infamous Commonwealth Games. Unfortunately most of what is being talked about is negative which continues to be fueled by the media's decision stick it to Organizing Committee Head, Suresh Kalmadi and his staff.   As someone who has been involved in sports administration for the past 8 years, I must say that this has been one of the most interesting real life case studies I could have ever imagined being a part of. A dance/fight between the Indian government, Indian Olympic Association, the Indian media, the international media, the Commonwealth Games Federation, the athletes, the sponsors and, most importantly, the Indian public whose tax money funded this Indian soap opera. To the surprise of many, the 19th Commonwealth Games did actually begin on October 3rd and events have been taking place for the past week. I've been able t...