How this started
A slightly unreasonable lifelong goal
Hi, I am Niraj Mulani, and I have a slightly unreasonable yet exciting lifelong goal of road trips in 100 countries.
On my honeymoon, I was ticking off country #5, Spain, and #6, Portugal. Exploring new cities, eating far too well, doing what people are actually supposed to do on a honeymoon. You know, playing football. 😉
But finding a game was surprisingly hard.
The games were definitely happening. The problem was finding them.
Some were buried inside WhatsApp groups. Others lived on Instagram pages, local apps, Facebook groups, venue websites or obscure corners of the internet. Every new city meant starting the search again.
My wife watched this happen enough times and eventually proposed an amendment to the 100-country plan:
Why don’t you also play football in 100 countries?
And just like that, a lifelong goal acquired a sidequest.
Enter PlayFootyAnywhere.
PlayFootyAnywhere exists to answer one very simple question:
I’m in this city. Where can I play football?
Search a city and find the local groups, organisers, platforms and communities actually making pickup football happen there. No endless hunting through Reddit threads from 2019.
No trying twelve different versions of “pickup football Lisbon” on Google. No arriving somewhere and discovering the game three days after you left.
Just find the football. Join the game. Play.
The idea started with travellers, because that was the problem I was trying to solve. But the same problem exists whenever you land somewhere new. Whether you’re travelling for a week, moving to a new country, studying abroad, working remotely or simply looking for a different game in your own city.
Football is supposed to be the world’s game. Finding people to play it with shouldn’t require investigative journalism.
And then there’s the Football Passport.
Once you start playing in new places, you want a record of it. I know I do. The Football Passport collects the cities and countries you’ve played in.
Mine has 95 countries to fill.
PlayFootyAnywhere was built because I wanted to see more of the world from behind a steering wheel, and experience a little bit of each place with a football at my feet.
Now the goal is to make that possible for anyone.
Wherever you land, there should be a game waiting.