Congratulations to everyone of the forum members..its been great to be with so many experts in their own rights..i have joined this forum in 2011 but I almost never ever miss to be here everyday..even though I hardly ever post much. Great job by the admins to keep this forum going. Get well soon Somesh!!
I first came across Indian Football Network three years ago while searching the Net for transfer-related news regarding my favourite club, East Bengal. Gradually found out that though there are other forums and websites,this is the one which provides the best and the most up-to-date information. My love with this forum grew in the last two years as I was impressed by the quality of the reviews, the balanced arguments and the information. As Dhritiman has rightly pointed out, the two cardinal features of this forum are, that it is passionate about Indian Football, and it does not kowtow to anyone. I finally became so involved that I overcame my aversion for joining any social network (I am not a member of any social network like Facebook, Twitter) and registered as a member in June 2015. And Believe me, in spite of my hectic schedule ( I work as an Assistant Professor of English in a Govt. College), I never miss checking out on IFN at least once in a day, though I cannot contribute as much as I would like to these days. Thank you guys for making me feel welcome here- in these last seven months, I have thoroughly enjoyed interacting and arguing, reviewing, bantering with all of you. I sincerely hope that Indian Football Forum stays true to its goals and activate a qualitative change ( it already has, in some aspects) in Indian football. IFN, wishing you a very happy anniversary, may you celebrate a hundred more. Get well soon, Somesh and best of luck to you, Rudra.
Thank you all for the beautiful comments and Dhritiman for opening this thread. Five years is a long time. Here is the story of how it all started.
During the peak of Orkut IFF community's popularity, the owner Shre and moderators pitched a plan to create a website for the community. We all were excited about it and some of us had already submitted some content for the proposed website.
Months passed by but there was no progress at all, neither any transparency about what was happening. PIFA's Nirvan Shah was also a member and he bought the indianfootballfans.com 'for the community' apparently but I presume there were differences with the admins and they had to buy another domain http://indianfootballfans.org/ But the website was nowhere in sight. Meanwhile, some of the members started their own blogs and shared on the forum which was patently disliked and criticized by the admins/moderators. This irked me particularly, for it appeared from their behaviour that there was some hierarchy among members.
Then a time came when Orkut was losing popularity with the rise of Facebook and I thought Indian Football Fans needed a forum independent of social sites for the sake of permanency. Rudra and I were active members of Orkut IFF but we didn't know that we were students of sister institutes, which we discovered serendipitously while all this was happening. I was in TIFR Mumbai while he in NCBS (TIFR), Bangalore. The same year in December I happened to visit NCBS for a week-long conference and there I pitched this plan to him. Although he did not join IFN formally at that time, he helped me a lot in setting it up. Five years down the line, I think that was a great meeting!
Then we started blog, some of the early blogs on youth development by Rudra involved a lot of hard work and that helped us gain recognition among football fraternity.
So here we are, five years down the line. I had not thought that IFN would be loved by so many people and would survive this long. But clearly it did, and it will live long. Thanks to all the members and visitors!
It would be great if you guys could share how you discovered IFN!
Its been almost 4.5 years for me at IFN. But it seems it was just yesterday that I joined IFN. I stumbled upon IFN by accident while looking for news on Indian football. Yes 5 years ago, it was difficult to get some consolidated news on Indian football if you are not in football hotbeds of Goa or Bengal. Unfortunately its still the same pertaining to I-league and National Team. It was one such evening when I was following the hype of our famous spiderman after the Asia cup heroics, that I saw a blog on him on IFN and then found the link of the forum. Though it took me couple of weeks to join here officially. And rest being history.
Growing up among the ardent cricket fans, I never was able to get news or discuss football in depth. My love for it kept me hooked to TV for football matches. It was all European football. Premier league precise. All that changed when I joined IFN. I was surprised by amount of information that was being discussed here. I learned a lot about football in general from here let alone Indian football.
In the end I must thank all the administrators and members here to make a fan like me feel at home. Not only football, you guys became a part of my daily life slowly and gradually. I thank you guys from the bottom of my heart for this. I cant think of a day without login into IFN.
i remember the football group in orkut,some people from there never followed,in those days only website that was providing any news was kolkatafootball.com . sure our community growed,but wish indian football was in better place,now the players are get paid decent money, hopefully the world cup u17 will do wonders for infra upgrade . then all we need are players,hopefully we will get some form academy's that started in last few years like baichung football schools or some others.
Comments
Get well soon Somesh!!
During the peak of Orkut IFF community's popularity, the owner Shre and moderators pitched a plan to create a website for the community. We all were excited about it and some of us had already submitted some content for the proposed website.
Months passed by but there was no progress at all, neither any transparency about what was happening. PIFA's Nirvan Shah was also a member and he bought the indianfootballfans.com 'for the community' apparently but I presume there were differences with the admins and they had to buy another domain http://indianfootballfans.org/
But the website was nowhere in sight. Meanwhile, some of the members started their own blogs and shared on the forum which was patently disliked and criticized by the admins/moderators. This irked me particularly, for it appeared from their behaviour that there was some hierarchy among members.
Then a time came when Orkut was losing popularity with the rise of Facebook and I thought Indian Football Fans needed a forum independent of social sites for the sake of permanency. Rudra and I were active members of Orkut IFF but we didn't know that we were students of sister institutes, which we discovered serendipitously while all this was happening. I was in TIFR Mumbai while he in NCBS (TIFR), Bangalore. The same year in December I happened to visit NCBS for a week-long conference and there I pitched this plan to him. Although he did not join IFN formally at that time, he helped me a lot in setting it up. Five years down the line, I think that was a great meeting!
Then we started blog, some of the early blogs on youth development by Rudra involved a lot of hard work and that helped us gain recognition among football fraternity.
So here we are, five years down the line. I had not thought that IFN would be loved by so many people and would survive this long. But clearly it did, and it will live long. Thanks to all the members and visitors!
It would be great if you guys could share how you discovered IFN!
Growing up among the ardent cricket fans, I never was able to get news or discuss football in depth. My love for it kept me hooked to TV for football matches. It was all European football. Premier league precise. All that changed when I joined IFN. I was surprised by amount of information that was being discussed here. I learned a lot about football in general from here let alone Indian football.
In the end I must thank all the administrators and members here to make a fan like me feel at home. Not only football, you guys became a part of my daily life slowly and gradually. I thank you guys from the bottom of my heart for this. I cant think of a day without login into IFN.
sure our community growed,but wish indian football was in better place,now the players are get paid decent money,
hopefully the world cup u17 will do wonders for infra upgrade .
then all we need are players,hopefully we will get some form academy's that started in last few years like baichung football schools or some others.