I understood very little about football when I watched the 1999 UEFA Champions League final. Back then in Bangladesh, we didn't have football broadcasting to the level we see today. But the stars had aligned and late into that fateful night, my younger self stayed up watching the final, live on TV. . When Manchester United scored two goals in a matter of a few minutes in injury time, I was in disbelief. Surely this game was scripted! I have never seen joy like that which the United players and fans displayed that night -- it was absolutely contagious. I barely knew the rules of the game, and yet I still found myself caught up in the extraordinary celebrations. And so, a new United fan was born and with it came my lifelong obsession over football.
That night, I dreamt of becoming a professional football player. Unfortunately, reality was not as sweet. I spent hours on the football field and even had a successful trial at one of the biggest clubs in Bangladesh: Abahani, where I was selected for the U-19 team. But my parents advised against it because sports, in particular football, was a risky career path given the socio-economic context of the country. When I finally accepted that I won't be going pro, I made a promise to myself that whatever career I chose, it would have something to do with football.
As I grew older, I would take a keen interest in player transfers. There was always so much hype around them; every transfer seemed to have its own backstory. The entire process of how a player moved from one club to another fascinated me. This would lead me to research beyond what was available on display. In the early 2000s, football media was nowhere near as in-depth as it is today. We didn't have Fabrizio Romano or Gianluca Di Marzio or even Twitter. In Bangladesh, we'd usually have to wait for the next day's newspaper to read a brief overview of what was happening in the world of football. Radio stations and TV channels only cared about football during the World Cup.
I finished undergrad and did an MBA, all because I wanted to understand how Sports business worked. I was never a great student, but I always found marketing quite interesting and that opened a few doors for me.