I moved to Dubai recently and joined a Wednesday night football game. Apparently it's been going for about fifteen years. Same kick-off time. Same turf. Mostly the same Whatsapp banter and issues. Just a different crew.

It got me thinking how many games like these exist around the world. How many of them have quietly outlived a pandemic, startups and Chelsea managers?

I used to play one of those back in Mumbai. A regular Wednesday and Sunday pick up game run via WhatsApp channels with over 300 members run by one man named Alok. Ive been playing it for about 7 years now even though its been running for much longer than that. The WhatsApp group that he runs has over 300 members combined, the waiting list for an eight-a-side game is sometimes longer than the number of spots available. Alok gets paid exactly nothing. He's basically an algorithm. Except he complains more. He Is the groups punching bag both from a banter and conflict context. He does (discretly) get an enormous amount of respect, yet is probably in the lower end of the power or influence spectrum on the group. He bans no-shows from games but they turn up next week anyway. What drives him? Ive never asked him, but I assume its his intense love of football and the community around it. He's got an incredible football IQ, can find a decent pass on a good day but he utterly despises receiving the ball. But man, he deserves his due.

We celebrate creators and we've forgotten curators. Alok doesn't create football. He rarely creates or scores a goal. But he curates the conditions for football to happen. Week after week. Year after year.

Brands obsess over creators. Maybe they should sponsor these kinds of curators.

Imagine Nike identifying the thousand people responsible for getting the most people playing every week. Not influencers. The Enablers.

Send them boots, gear. discounts. Recognition!

If you inspire one person, that’s nice. If you organize 20 odd people every Wednesday and Sunday for ten years you're basically grassroots infrastructure.

So here’s my question - Do brands give too much weight to online impressions than participation? A disproportionate amount of marketing dollars on influencers rather than the Alok’s of the world?

Turns out the most important person in amateur football is the one who keeps pressing "Create Event.”

Thanks for the memories Alok.

Be really, really good at something. Then hope somebody important happened to be watching on the one day you remembered how to control a football.

We've somehow accepted that the difference between becoming a professional and becoming "that guy who's unbelievable on Wednesdays" often comes down to geography, timing and whether a scout fancied standing in the rain that afternoon.

It feels outdated. Even with all the academies and player scout tech accessible to only the few.

AiSCOUT is already letting footballers complete AI-powered assessments from their phones. HomeCourt critiques your jump shot without charging by the hour. Strava has quietly become one of the biggest databases of amateur athletes on the planet, despite most people opening it just to prove to strangers they went for a run before 7am. If you need more about AI tech and sport there's a nice report from the G42ai guys on their website.

It made me wonder…

Why isn't the ATP running the world's biggest amateur tennis tour?

There are tennis league groups that have already proven people are perfectly happy self scheduling and organizing entire leagues through WhatsApp and an unhealthy relationship with self ratings. What if the ATP just stuck two cameras on every court (swing vision app is worth a look), add AI line calling, match analytics and a global ranking, and suddenly every recreational match becomes more than a recreational match.

Karting feels even stranger.

Every rental kart already knows your lap time. Your iPhone already knows where you are.

AI already knows what good driving looks like. Stick those three together and somewhere there's a 41-year-old sitting behind this blog post getting a notification that says:

"Congratulations. You're braking on turn 6 is the best we've seen."

I wish. Turn 6 at the Dubai Kartdrome and I don't get along.

But coming back on track..

What if sponsorship doesn't begin after you're famous?

What if it begins because your data starts looking like a green flag?

"Hi. We've noticed your consistency through Turns 4 and 5 is making our algorithm perk up. Here's ten free sessions. You're new racing gloves with our logo is in the mail. We'd like to see where this goes."

Maybe we've been thinking about AI the wrong way.

Maybe it isn't replacing scouts. Maybe it's replacing luck. And maybe this isn't really about talent identification.

Maybe it's about the consumerization of professional sport.

Something tells me a betting company is already halfway down this rabbit hole.

Unfortunately the algorithm mostly wins.

Every sport eventually produces someone so outrageously gifted that they accidentally ruin recreational players forever. Messi. Steph Curry. Alcaraz. Tapia. Every content stream produces edits of the outrageously good that they make you believe.

We're no longer copying good players. We're copying the clips that got the most views.

Now every intermediate player thinks they should be attempting airborne smashes from the back glass despite struggling to return a slow lob. Social media has convinced an entire generation that highlights are fundamentals. Meanwhile, the best players at your local club are usually middle-aged men who move three steps, miss nothing and look mildly annoyed by everyone else's enthusiasm. Boring!

Lets be honest, most of us will never reach elite level of sport. We'll probably never know what it feels like to serve out a match in a Wimbledon final. But just for a moment there is joy in hitting that running forehand pass down the line with a gut wrenching scream. Only for the ball to land in the fence at the back of the court.

6-0, 6-1.

Reality check. "Play the percentages".

But tomorrow, Id probably do it again. And I hope I never stop.

We amateurs live for moments like this. Opportunities that come around few and far between where we even get the chance to attempt a shot of that magnitude.

There's something wonderfully irrational about amateur athletes.

We know we'll probably miss.

We go for it anyway.

We're not professionals.

We're tourists visiting greatness for half a second.

That's enough.

Professionals get paid to be consistent. Amateurs get to be unforgettable.