Live India, Love Football

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...