Chris PUNNAKKATTU DANIEL
Editor-in-Chief & Creative Director

IndianFootball.Com is celebrating its 10th anniversary on April 10, 2008… 10 years full of exciting experiences, lot of passion and a never-ending success story! IndianFootball.Com continues its run in the world of the beautiful game – the world game of football!

I’m more than happy to be part of this venture and can definitely say that IndianFootball.Com has made the greatest impact on my life so far. But how does it come that a second generation Indian, born and bread in Germany, associates himself with a website concentrating on football in India? Far away from the best of the best in the game?!

Well, if you grow up in Germany people automatically get interested in football as it is almost like a religion to many... So my interest in football started off in early childhood, while watching the likes of Diego Armando Maradona at the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico. After this World Cup I started to focus on domestic football in Germany and started to support giants FC Bayern Munich.

In those days German friends used to ask me regularly, why India isn’t capable to find eleven talented footballers out of a population of one billion. This was my key to open the door of Indian football!

Yes, I used to visit my grandparents and other relatives in India annually during my summer vacations in school, but I never thought about football in India… The key question by my friends awakened my patriotism for the country of my origin – India!

In 1999 I visited Kerala on one of my regular summer vacation trips and was keen to return to Germany with a jersey of the Indian national team… But guess what… The jersey was not available anywhere in Kerala or any other part of the country… The vacation ended and I returned back home to Germany - disappointed, but still eager to don the jersey and shine in pride in-front of my German friends!

A few weeks later we got connected to the net back home and my first steps in the cyberspace ended in the search for the India jersey: Starting the browser, typing www.google.com and searching for ‘Indian football national team jersey’… Wow… a site called www.indianfootball.com was one of the top search results and it even offered the national team jersey! I immediately e-mailed the webmaster called Arunava Chaudhuri – a guy based in Germany like me. Sounds curious, but why not… Arunava got back to me within a few hours and asked me to give him a call for further details on the jersey. So I called him up and ended the call as a proud owner of the Indian national team jersey!

Arunava and I kept in touch. We e-mailed each other from time to time. My interest in Indian football reached a new high, while getting more inside information on the game at www.indianfootball.com.

In December 1999 I was offered an editorial post at IndianFootball.Com by Arunava, which I accepted. The best decision ever! Through my work at IndianFootball.Com I had the chance to get not only experiences in journalism, but also in coaching, management, consulting, public relations and other fields of the football business.

It is my dream to see India playing the FIFA World Cup one day and I keep on supporting India due to my love and passion for the country of my origin! I would like to help Indian football in its development and progress with all possible resources and experiences I can offer. It's a dream all of us at IndianFootball.Com have and I know that India has still a long way to go! But we all have the same dream and love the same game! We have to keep our dreams in mind and take step by step to develop and learn carefully! We have to be patient and learn the lessons from the past and present! Mistakes have to be made to learn from them and we altogether need to keep the focus on our goal!

IndianFootball.Com is a prime example how football enthusiasts from around the globe get together and join hands to see their dream come true! All members of our editorial team are passionate about the game and we try our best to promote the game in India and within the Indian communities around the globe!

IndianFootball.Com is a family and our family does not only consist of the nineteen-member editorial team… Our family is the world of football – fans, journalists, footballers and administrators… all of YOU!

I look forward to many more successful years to come… Its football, its passion, its love!