Indian Super League club Hyderabad FC has collaborated with German giants Borussia Dortmund last year. The collaboration is nearing its first anniversary which has been extremely beneficial for the ISL side. However, Hyderabad FC co-owner, Varun Tripuraneni admitted that the COVID-19 pandemic got in the way of their desired results.
Varun Tripuraneni has talked about their tie-up with Borussia Dortmund which continues to benefit the Hyderabad FC footballers.
Tripuraneni said as per ISL’s website: “We have just completed a year [made official in August 2020] and it’s a long way to go. It’s been tough [due to the Coronavirus pandemic]. We only got to see what we can do with some online coaching sessions and things like that until travel opens up for coaches from BVB to travel,”
“There is a certain spirit in the partnership and we are looking to engage from time to time to make it interesting for the fans. It will be a bit slow till things ease out a bit.”
The head of International Commercial/New Business & Managing Director at the BVB Football Academy, Benedikt Scholz believes that Hyderabad can learn from them considering that they were hit by their own financial crisis in 2005-2006.
He said: “We were hit by a financial crisis in 2005-2006. We were not able to buy stars and build them on our own. We really focussed on building young talent and making them Bundesliga and even international stars.”
“We are pretty confident that we have certain expertise in this sector and also have continuity of staff. We have proven to do that and players like [Giovanni] Reyna, [Youssoufa] Moukoko and [Erling] Haaland are an expression of that.”
“We would never say that you can copy what we are doing here. But we can share what we have done that could be beneficial. Our doors for Hyderabad are open and we are happy to understand the Indian football structure as well,” he concluded.
