Thursday , March 28 2024

Podcast – 420Grams Ep4: Scott O’Donell (former India Technical Director)!

A new podcast on Indian football has been launched under the curious name of 420grams featuring the host Arjun Pandit, resident guest Siddhanth Aney and this time former India Technical Director Scott O’Donell.

For those of us on the outside it is hard to comprehend how much has changed in Indian football in a very short time. Scott O’Donell spent the past five year in India working first as a FIFA employees charged with setting up the national academies to train the best young talent in the country. On the face of it setting up such a project should not be too complex a task, particularly for an experienced professional. But this was not an infrastructure and logistics driven project. The idea was to build a footballing nation from the ground up. It turned into a cohesive effort to create a grassroots structure for the sport in India involving new competition structures, rules for clubs, battles against age cheating, coach education and plenty of internal bickering. We spoke with O’Donell, just before her left the country, to get a sense of how successful he felt the stint had been and what he was leaving behind for Savio Madeira, a domestically educated coach and manager who has grown with the system and earned the right to replace O’Donell as technical director for the football federation

The people behind the 420grams podcast say: Contrary to what the majority of you is thinking, this is not a podcast about marijuana. Although it could be, from time to time. This is your regular dose of the inside goings-on in Indian football presented by three men in a tub, with a deep personal investment in the sport and the country. 420grams wants to be an honest and engaging conversation space.

About Arunava Chaudhuri

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