I have the opportunity to go to India next February. While there, I will most likely be working with kids, most likely in the orphanages.

This past summer I was blessed and able to go to Cameroon and work with kids over there. What we did to attract attention and get some involvement from a variety of ages was holding soccer, "futbol", tournaments. This was highly successful!

Heres my question...is soccer popular in India? Do you think that it will have pretty much the same results in attracting the kids?

I know that cricket is a big thing over there, however, I know absolutely NOTHING about the sport. It is a sport, right?


tia

soccer is HUGE in India

Not really. It is popular just in states of West bengal, Kerala and goa. Maybe some north eastern states. Everywhere else it is cricket.

For most of South India, Cricket is by far the favored sport. You are starting to see some tennis (a bit) because of Sonia Mirza, but after Cricket, Soccer is probably the next biggest sport.

I grew up in Southern India, and we played cricket most of the time. We did play soccer once in a while, like when the Soccer World Cups were on. In school, we had some classmates from Bengal who played soccer, so we joined them sometimes.