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You'll Never Get This Time Back

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“Neel, why didn’t you come to practice today?” “Sorry, Greg. I couldn’t make it. Just didn’t feel like training today.” “Neel, you know the policy around missing training. You’ve been so consistent in the past. Please don’t miss any more sessions until the end of the season. You’re a key player, and the team needs you.” “Thanks, Greg. I have a lot going on these days, and I’m actually not sure I’m going to be able to continue with the team. I may have to stop playing.” There was a long pause. “Neel, it sounds like you’re going through something, so I’ll give you some time to think about what you’re saying and whether you really mean it. But I’ll leave you with one thing…” And then he said something that has stayed with me for nearly three decades. “You’ll never get this time back. This opportunity to play for a top youth club in Southern California, alongside talented teammates who are more like family. In a short time, this will all be gone, and it won’t come back. So take advantage o...
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Football or Padel? The Team We Build Around Our Children

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The other day, my father-in-law was sitting at our home in Mumbai when he casually asked me, “So, what sport do you want Leela to play football or padel?” I assume he chose those two particular sports because football has been my passion, and profession, for more than 30 years, while padel has become my latest sporting obsession. As I tend to do with almost every question asked of me, including the ones that are clearly rhetorical, I thought about it for a few seconds and then gave him an unnecessarily long answer. My initial response was football. I had plenty of reasons. First, I think football is one of the most complete sports a child can play. It builds strength, stamina, coordination and fitness, but also demands awareness, decision-making, resilience and the ability to keep going when things aren't going your way. Second, I think training and playing football can be equally fun which, in my experience, isn't necessarily true of every sport, although I won't name name...
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What Watching Avantika Feed Leela Taught Me About Great Coaching

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Our now nearly nine-month-old daughter, Leela, is well into her solid-food journey. She is discovering all sorts of tastes, textures, smells and colours, and watching her experience all of this has been one of the great joys of becoming a father. But there is something else I have been watching. My wife, Avantika. She has taken on the lion's share of the responsibility for feeding Leela, or at least attempting to feed her, three times a day. And honestly, it is quite a sight. Picture the scene. Leela is sitting in her ridiculously expensive high chair, wearing her standard feeding uniform: no shirt, no shorts, just a diaper and a pink bib. She has a huge smile on her face because she knows that a game—or battle, depending on your perspective—is about to begin. Avantika puts some food on the tray and, with the enthusiasm of someone presenting the winning dish on MasterChef, clearly announces what it is. "Sweet potato!" She then waits. The idea, as recommended by several pr...
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The Invisible Opponent: What Football Taught Me About Culture, Climate and Parenthood

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During my first few years working in football in India, there was a widely held belief in the industry that made a lot of sense on paper: If we send talented Indian footballers to better football countries, they will become better footballers. Simple, right? Take a talented teenage player, put them in Western Europe or North America, surround them with better facilities, stronger competition, better coaching and a more developed football culture, and—poof!—watch them become the next big thing. I believed it too. And a few years into my career, I had the opportunity to test that theory. There was a young player represented by my company, Libero Sports, who was considered one of the brightest prospects in Indian football. He was still a teenager, but he had already performed well for the youth national team and had impressed at several international tournaments. We thought he had something special. And, like many others in the industry, we believed that if we could move him to an environ...
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How Hanging Out with MLS Supporters in 2004 Prepared Me for Fatherhood in 2026

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I remember when I was working in the Fan Development department at Major League Soccer in New York. Way back in the early 2000s. Yes, that really was another lifetime ago. MLS was still finding its feet in the highly competitive and ridiculously saturated American sports landscape. When I joined the league office in 2003, there were just ten teams spread across the country, and many of them were still playing in enormous NFL stadiums. Which meant that a few thousand people might be watching a soccer match in an 80,000-seat stadium. Sometimes the American football lines were more prominent than the soccer ones. Not exactly the most intimate setting for building a football culture. My job was to help the league and its clubs build their fanbases through targeted programs, partnerships and community initiatives. I loved the job. I also loved football. So, naturally, I took advantage of every opportunity I could to attend live MLS matches. And something kept catching my attention. The supp...
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Daily Practice, Leela, and the Secret Every Elite Athlete Knows

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There is no magic formula. Every elite athlete knows this, even if the rest of the world keeps looking for one. The path to mastery is not mysterious. It is repetitive, unglamorous, and deeply consistent. It is doing the same thing in training, day after day, having faith that the body is adapting incrementally, invisibly until one day something that once seemed impossible simply... happens. And then, over time, that impossible thing becomes the norm. The examples are everywhere once you start looking. In football, your first touch is chaotic when you start out. But do wall passes every single day and something shifts. Your body begins to automate the movement. One day you receive a ball under pressure, in full stride, and control it without thinking, something your past self would have found hard to believe. In basketball, every early shot feels like a guess. Then comes the hundreds of repetitions, the same form, the same rhythm, day after day, until your muscle memory locks in. You g...
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Nine Months, One Partnership, Five Truths About Developing Youth Sport in India

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Nine months. That's how long my team and I worked on formalizing the partnership between Dream Sports Foundation and the Premier League. For those who know me well, they'll understand why this one was personal. The Premier League is my favourite sports league, has been for as long as I can remember. I have long admired the work they do in leadership and coach development. And this partnership gave me the privilege of working closely with two people I genuinely respect and appreciate, Reuben Borah and Hrishikesh Shende. The partnership is anchored in three areas: coaching education, competition, and international exposure. But I'm not here to walk you through the MOU. What I want to do is share what came up when I sat with it all after the first stage of deliverables was complete. The kind of reflection that doesn't happen in the post-event debrief but in the quieter moments after on a flight home, over a cup of chai, or just when the noise settles. As always, I made a l...
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