India Set For Debut In Corporate Football WC

For corporate executives, engineers, techies, and number crunchers, it's going to be a different ballgame altogether. But as 16 corporate entities from as many as 16 nations take on each other for the final phase of The Corporate Football World Cup, in Morocco in October, it will be India's maiden chance to make its mark in global football, albeit on a much smaller scale and in a different format. It will be the seventh edition of The Corporate Football World Cup, organised by the Federation Internationale de Football Corporatif (FIFCO).

Montreal (Canada-headquartered) FIFCO, on its part, promotes corporate football globally and organises The Corporate Football World Cup, an annual feature, hosted in different countries across the globe.

There will be many first-timers this time. For the first time, India will participate in the tournament. There will be a separate women's soccer championship simultaneously with the men's one. If things move the way they have been envisaged, a corporate team from Kolkata will be seen participating in the tournament for the first time.

This time it was a tough call to send a team from India through an all-India-level qualifying round, in such a short period. However the desire was strong to ensure that a corporate team from India should participate in the final round. That's why the Indian organisers are organising Kolkata Super League among the Kolkata corporates in April. The winner will take part in the final round in Morocco. From next year onwards it will be played at all India levels. Teams from Infosys, TCS, Deloitte, PwC, Mindtree, our team (Infiflex), pharma companies, and energy companies are likely to participate. Interestingly, Jude Mohanty, Founder, and CEO of Kolkata-headquartered Infiflex, has recently joined as the Indian Director of the global body FIFCO.

Albert Zbily, President of FIFCO (Federation Internationale de Football Corporatif), visited Kolkata to take stock of the preparations and take up some other initiatives in the future. Football is a passion in India, especially in Kolkata, followed very extensively and the corporate ecosystem pursues the game vividly.

But it's just not organising one tournament (World Cup Football for corporates), Zbily has much larger plans up his sleeves. At present, FIFCO has 64 members from 64 countries. The plan is to take this figure to at least 100 by 2030 so that there are much larger representations of the global corporate entities. They are also working on having a soccer training academy and a training academy for aspiring referees. The whole idea is to promote the concept of building a healthy corporate culture through health and wellness and soccer is one of the best ways of doing this. Besides, it will always be great fun to watch corporate rivalries being played out on the field in a healthy manner.

The organisations are also trying to involve as many governments and government organisations from different parts of the world as possible because such a tournament is bound to boost tourism and investment prospects in the host country as so many top corporate honchos, high net worth individuals from so many countries will be visiting. It will also help in building business networking.