‘You don’t need to stop loving cricket to start loving football,’ says Jose Antonio Cachaza

The Managing Director for La Liga League in India, Jose Antonio Cachaza played a pivotal role in expanding the tournament’s reach in India through partnerships with various local organisations and initiatives such as the La Liga Football Schools program, which aims to promote football development from grassroots across the country.

La Liga is one of the rapidly growing football leagues in India, and they took another step in increasing their fanbase in the country by launching a Spanish-Hindi football dictionary in partnership with the Embassy of Spain in India and the Instituto Cervantes in New Delhi on Monday.

Cachaza said that he didn’t understand anything about India when he first visited the country.

“I will tell you a little story. I had been trying to understand India and its economics since the very beginning. A few months after I came here, I told a friend, ‘I’ll never fully understand India’. And this person says, ‘it’s okay if you’re struggling to understand India because we don’t understand it either!” Cachaza told Hindustan Times.

“Basically, you must understand how to deal with situation and persons. Every country has a business culture that is different. When I came to India, a Spanish friend who conducts business in Tamil Nadu gave me an advice; ‘In India, you have to be patient’. And it was a great advice,” he further added.

‘Cricket fans are sports fans’ – Antonio Cachaza

Cachaza also mentioned the popularity of cricket in India as La Liga made Indian cricketer Rohit Sharma its ambassador for the country in 2019. Rohit, who went on to become captain of the India cricket team, is a big fan of the Real Madrid franchise.

“Basically, there were ups and downs. The relationship with Rohit came at a time when we thought it would help us to have a brand ambassador in India. We thought about Bollywood actors as well, all fantastic; but then, we realised that working with cricketer would make more sense than a Bollywood actor. Of course, we had complaints from fans on social media about why we had a cricketer. At the end, that’s where the following is. Rohit has the same number of followers as Ranveer Singh, the brand ambassador of the Premier League,” Cachaza said.

“But cricket fans are sports fans. With Rohit, you’re telling them, ‘listen, you don’t need to stop loving cricket to start loving football. If your hero loves football and La Liga, so can you’. That was the underlying message. With Bollywood, a big chunk of their following won’t be sports fans. With cricketers, most will be sports fans,” he concluded.