Spreading Indian football across the world

Indian football might not be going anywhere in a hurry, but in faraway Germany, a set of Indian football enthusiasts are doing their bit to spread the Indian game across the world. 26-year-old Arunava Chaudhuri, a student at the University of Dusseldorf, runs www.indianfootball.com, a rather comprehensive Indian football portal, that not only provides information on the goings-on back home here in India, but also organises Indian football tournaments across the year, in various parts of the world, to promote the game.
The next tournament in line is the Mini Indian World Cup in Dubai in February next year, where an Indian junior team, a veterans' side, and NRI teams from England and Germany are expected to take part.
Chaudhuri is based in Remscheid, where he was born and has resided in since. The website started on April 10, 1998, as Chaudhuri says, "just for the fun of it". The exact genesis of the website: "Only a few weeks earlier I had started to experiment with HTML and wanted to create a website on something new. I surfed the web and found that there were no sites on Indian football. That's how it started."
The site took on bigger shape once Chaudhuri started receiving emails from people, enquiring about various facets of Indian football. "That motivated me," says Chaudhuri, and "to keep people updated on happenings in Indian football, I started working more seriously on the site. Then in 1999, Chris P Daniel and Daniel Ponattu, two other second generation NRI youngsters interested in Indian football, got involved in the work, as it was becoming too much for me to handle alone. Abhishek P Gujral has since joined in and handles all the news from India. That's how it became big, and is now a stop for people who want information on Indian football both in India and the rest of the world."
Interestingly, despite "money is no issue and whatever the costs are, we handle it ourselves", the site's become popular enough to actually become the official website of the Indian national team's tour to England in 2002-2003. Chaudhuri adds, "The Asian Football Confederation honoured us when they invited us as a media organisation to cast votes during the AFC Annual Annual Awards 2002. The honour, which even large media groups don't get, acknowledges our work and knowledge of Indian football. And that's something!"
But bring up the topic of the All India Football Federation, and Chaudhuri gets somewhat worked up. He says, "What I find sad is that while FIFA has recognised us, and so has the AFC, the AIFF has not. Yes, we receive information from the on and off, but that's it. They haven't said anything at all about our preparing an official Indian football website at all, despite our interest. It's sad, because last summer we organised a training camp for the Indian under-17 national team in Germany."
As for the future, www.indianfootball.com has grand plans. They are self-confessedly trying to increase their scope in India and the amount of information on the site. One such plan, according to Chaudhuri, is "to start a section on European football, so that football fans come to the site and get interested in Indian football."