As a sessionman, there is not much of a choice about what you want to play. You gotta play the music of whoever hires you. So in an average month I end up playing anything from straight up rock n roll to bollywood to reggae and synth pop etc. The live gig scene here is pretty sorted, especially in the small towns where they have money but not much to do. I was shocked to see a massive live gig scene in Bengal where 50,000 people will turn up for a random concert. I mean who would've thought! The bongs are absolutely nuts tho. I once made the mistake of going for the Calcutta derby- it is just not pretty. I mean 100,000 bongs cramped up and drunk in a stadium is a scary sight. I left mid match to avoid the incredibly unoragnized crowd. Besides the quality of football was meh.
The only problem with playing music for a living is that you start disliking music, especially all the songs you play live. You are doing it so much that it is just not fun anymore. So I despise going to clubs, concerts and festivals coz I feel like I am going to work and coz as a musician you always have to protect your ears from loudness. And this does not sit well at all with my friends and my girlfriend.
Sounds like hard work. A colleague of mine does gigs outside of work, so I understand how much work can be involved.
Funny you mention Calcutta, I watched a documentary on it just yesterday. It's developing really fast and I never realised quite how diverse it is.
(09-15-2015, 10:07 AM)ACMILAN1983 Wrote: Sounds like hard work. A colleague of mine does gigs outside of work, so I understand how much work can be involved.
Funny you mention Calcutta, I watched a documentary on it just yesterday. It's developing really fast and I never realised quite how diverse it is.
It's an interesting city for sure. Although Cal makes Bombay look like a clean city. I don't mind a day logn visit there but I def don't see myself spending any more than a couple of days there. North East however is pretty gorgeous and absolutely football crazy. Although, there as well you mostly find EPL fans. A few friends of mine work in the Football sector but so far the scene is pretty sad. I don't see us dropping into the top 100 anytime soon.
I've always been tempted to see the North East.
The infrastructure in Indian football is seriously lacking, whichever perspective you look at it from. Investment needs to be made in every regard to really create change. I'm hoping the ISL has beneficial impacts, but I'm hearing concerning stories about it already after a year.
ISL has zero beneficial impacts. It's a way for celebrities to amuse themselves by buying a team, European has beens to have a nice paid vacation and for 'fans' ... its just something to do on a weekend. Story time- A friend of mine is on the coaching staff of the Delhi team and while visiting last year I attended a match mostly to see Del Piero play. The other team, I forgot which, was coached by Materazzi.
For the crowd (full of Messi and Ronaldo shirts) it was just a party. The stadium speakers blasted songs during the match, the celebs got more time on the in stadiums screen that the match that was on and the crowd mostly came for celeb spotting. The Delhi crowd for instance cheered for everything that happened on the pitch, irrespective of who did it. People sitting around me had no clue which about players or which side was wearing which color.
The level of football is atrocious. Forget pressing or defending- after 60-70 minutes everyone was just walking around. I did get to see a fantastic Elano FK goal though. The highlight of that match for me was shouting 'Interista pezzo di merda' at Materazzi - who probably was left wondering how in the middle of Delhi he was being abused in Italian. That gave me a lot of satisfaction 
Needless to say, I have not bothered to go to another match as its just a waste of time. They are however opening academies in the country (which is about 50 years too late) and United esp have opened quite a few. On the whole, the system is corrupt as expected, the red tapism is prominent and the infrastructure inadequate. Everyone is reading too much into ISL- its not helping at all.. but if you want to have a good laugh, then you can watch ISL on starsports.com They are streaming it free this year I think.
My hope is that ISL brings enthusiasm and money into the sport in the country. Whether it's nothing more than a marketing tool or not is something I think we'll only know over time. If they are serious, they'll not just invest in the competition every year, but will look to invest in grassroots to develop the Indian talent and make use of the prestigious foreign talents/coaches to help develop the game in the country.
I understand the frustration of the genuinely passionate football fans, the level of focus on the "show" and celebs is disheartening when you want to watch the sport, but truth is that in order to have any sort of mass appeal and the attention of most in India, you need to have the side pieces that's attractive to them, with hope that the more they end up watching the sport the more they grow to love it.
On the level of football, it wasn't great I agree, but I think it was actually better than I thought it would be. There were some interesting Indian players who got to showcase their ability and honestly it's still very early days. Indian football literally isn't on the map right now, it's barely notable in the context of Asian football. That's the thing, it takes a lot of time and patience for this to grow with reasonable quality players being grown at home, so much so that I think realistically if India gets the infrastructure in place quickly, it could be competitive in Asia in around 10 years and at this point I'm not confident that will happen.
The ISL is symbolic that there is some effort to help the sport grow in the country, even if it's in the interest in making money. Even if it raises the awareness of the sport to be somewhat relevant in the country and shows the youth that there is a possibility to succeed and earn good money in the sport, or at least even gets kids playing football in the street more, then it opens avenues of growth.
The team coached by Materazzi was Chennaiyin.
Somedevil I thought this might be a podcast of interest to you:
http://www.beyondthepitch.net/podcasts/e...015/09/09/
At around the 54th minute mark there's a discussion about football in India and other parts of South Asia that touches a lot on what we've discussed here. The conversation is worth a listen.
I think when it comes down to it, anyone who understands football seems to agree that South Asia needs to invest in grassroots development and the growth in infrastructure.
Where is Furbo? lol2: I just realized that he was very active during the first week then has disappeared totally for the second week so far. 
(09-21-2015, 03:38 PM)ACMILAN1983 Wrote: Somedevil I thought this might be a podcast of interest to you:
http://www.beyondthepitch.net/podcasts/e...015/09/09/
At around the 54th minute mark there's a discussion about football in India and other parts of South Asia that touches a lot on what we've discussed here. The conversation is worth a listen.
I think when it comes down to it, anyone who understands football seems to agree that South Asia needs to invest in grassroots development and the growth in infrastructure.
Thanks for the link broseph. The biggest problem here is cricket. I was talking to a friend of mine in Boston and he made a point which I thought was valid for India too. He said that the reason why US can't produce top class footballers is coz the best athletes at high school or college level have dreams of NBA/NFL/MLB etc and are unlikely to give importance to MLS.
He also stressed that even now in the states, despite the increasing popularity of EPL, football is still considered a girls sport or something you play as a kid. Same goes here- all the good athletes here are going to go for cricket tryouts, not football- football is just something you play in school or college for fun. If not cricket, most kids will go for Tennis, golf (which is very fashionable) etc. Most talent is swept up by Cricket/Tennis.
It's only in the north east that young kids really want to be footballers but then there is not much money and neither is there any sort of an infrastructure (especially up there, coz they are not really rich states). It makes me laugh when people say that ISL means that India can compete with the big guns and that we can even think of WC qualification. I have read journalistic pieces bragging about this 'achievement'. In reality, We can't even compete on an Asian level.
What they need, which is apparent to even a non pro like me, is a 20 year plan. We are behind world football by at least 40 years. We have no academies, no coaches and not even decent pitches. Besides The kids have nowhere to play (like public spaces). Most of all- we have the evil of cricket. A very small part of the population watches football and that too EPL/LA Liga. Cricket rules this country and I don't see it changing anytime soon.
It's a stark contrast- you see cricket academies in Bombay- that is some serious business. Proper infrastructure- coaches- facilities - you got everything. No wonder we are so good in that sport. Same goes for Tennis- with all the success Leander etc have gotten internationally- kids really look up to them. As for football- they know who is bhaichung bhutia but that's about it.
Will India be competitive anytime soon? No. Will we be anywhere in 20 years? I highly doubt so. football here is just a way for whoever is in the show, to make money. Whether it is politicians running the federation or the overpaid no name foreigner coaches or the no name african/south american players who play in the national league. Then of course there is the facade of ISL.
Sure there are people who want to change things but they probably do not have the resources or the support.
Personally, Indian football does not interest me one bit and whatever I know is coz of friends who work/play in the scene. Besides, our own Rossoneri have enough problems to keep me perplexed for days 
Xu, I hope Furbo returns too. I kind of feel bad we pretty much went off topic in this thread
Somedevil, no worries about the link, I thought it was a pretty interesting discussion. I agree cricket traditionally has always been difficult to overcome for football to thrive and I think the comparison with the US is fair. I think in the US, we're seeing a change in that football is carving its space and is growing there now that there appears to be a solid infrastructure. However, your friend is right that it is still a sport more associated with women than men.
This stuff takes time though and it may be that we'll never see football as the dominant sport in these nations. The thing India has going for it is the size of the population. Even if football is second to cricket, if its popularity grows and there is a significant number of kids interested in trying to make it to the top level, India has a massive pool of people to select from. Interesting you mentioned tennis and golf. I totally get more Indians taking up tennis, as some individuals have started breaking through at the top level and have gotten success. However, I never really understood how golf became so popular, especially when I've heard in the news that some Indian six year old is setting all sorts of records in the sport.
I'd love to see and understand why football isn't more popular, why it is just considered this recreational activity. You would think that with the country's history, the popularity and growth of competitions like the Premiership, the fact that football is the biggest sport in the world, that Indian people would be playing the game so much more. Even stranger is that India as a nation has faced numerous economic challenges in the past, unlike today where it's economic growth is quite an achievement. You'd think that a sport as accessible as football would thrive among the poorer communities, similar to what's been seen in the past in Brazil.
North East and Bengal are pretty much the biggest football communities right? Anyway, ISL at this point doesn't really offer anything, it's a joke to say India can compete with even the better Asian nations, it's not even close. I try to be optimistic that ISL can offer the spark needed to see growth of the sport in the nation and hopefully they'll understand how they need to invest the money into the sport (again going back to infrastructure and grassroots), but at this point it's impossible for anyone to argue it's seriously contributing towards improving the quality of the sport in the country. ISL offers people some hope that football can grow in the country, but right now there's little substantial evidence that it's doing much else.
You're right about a 20 year plan. I think realistically if they act now and get things right first time, in 10 years Indian football could be competitive in Asia (not likely winning the Asian cup etc, but at least competing with teams like Japan or S.Korea). I say that based on the rise of Japanese football in the 90s, where they did spend on the professional league and bring in foreign stars. However, they also invested in their infrastructure and grassroots heavily and honestly their rise has been often cited as a remarkable achievement among experts. The other difficulty India faces, as you've acknowledged, is corruption.
I have an interest in Indian football, at least that I really want it to grow, but realistically you're right, there are many obstacles to overcome to have any success. A really disheartening thing is it seems like the decision makers are absolutely clueless about the sport, identifying there's an opportunity there, but not having any idea whatsoever on how to reach the end goal. The podcast says it well, they need to build from the bottom up, whereas it appears they are trying to build from the top down.
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