My 2010 World Cup

I had another great working month during a World Cup. But unlike in 2006 when I travelled across Germany to watch matches live, this time around I rather preferred to stay back in Germany and wanted to work from here. And the envisaged plan worked out perfectly fine for me.

I had my usual work at the Deutsche Welle radio's Bengali programme as our in house football expert. Before the tournament we produced some specials and during the tournament I previewed and analysed matches. Also before the tournament I made a special feature for our English programme's Asia Compact show on Asia at the 2010 World Cup. Luckily South Korea and Japan didn't let me down as I had raised some expectations about them in my feature.

And then there were the additions assignments during the tournament which meant lots of fun and interaction with people, something which I love. I was correspondent for English language news channel Times Now, Germany expert for ESPN India and for the Indicast's "The Sports Bench" podcast a general expert. Plus I have been blogging on the tournament on my own blog and at sportskeeda.com, writing about special experiences and things with I liked or rather didn't. To sum it up, loads of work, but work which is fun.

Surely covering the German perspective from my home town of Remscheid gave me new insights into a city were I have lived most of my life. I have to thank Remscheid and its people, who have helped me during the tournament making my job easier though it sometimes was tough to find people capable and willing to speak English on camera. But we always managed, got some nice pieces done and I hope we got it across to India.

The other tasks were mainly following the matches, the tournament in general and Germany in particular. You not only watch the matches, the analysis, the talk before and after; but to stay informed also read a lot of things on the net plus speak to contacts and insiders. One has to stay as up-to-date as possible so that when you have to give an expert opinion, you have the right facts available.

But I also had a tough task to master. And that was to cover the Octopus Paul story and then talk about it live on Indian television. Might sound easy, but to talk about such a creature for over 20 minutes with him not really doing anything is tough, but I got through this task and am a little wiser when the next time such a situation arises. And I can tell you, doing live commentary of a football match or being an expert/pundit is much much easier...

My final piece of work on the 2010 FIFA World Cup was writing a guest column about my views on the tournament for the Daily Pioneer's World Cup special which was published today, July 18. A rather longish piece on how I saw the tournament and its impact.

I have uploaded some of my audiovisual work onto my YouTube channel and also some pictures onto my Facebook fanpage. I hope you like them...


The 2010 FIFA World Cup is over, but work continues and besides the regular media work I look forward to two events which I will be attending in the coming weeks. First I will be a speaker at the India Business Forum in London on July 22 to be held at Christie's and then on July 31/August 1 I will be in Zurich, Switzerland to moderate at the International Goalkeeper Congress.


Follow me on my Facebook Fanpage: Arunava Chaudhuri Fanpage

Follow my exploits on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Arunfoot

Follow my work on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/arunavaaboutfootball