Futsal Journey - A peek into Samsung's Club Culture

By Nikunj Saunshi

Nikunj Saunshi a 2014, IIT Bombay graduate is a passionate footballer who in this blog talks about his passion for the game and his futsal journey in Korea.

1. Where do you work and what are your hobbies?
I work at Samsung Electronics as a Software Engineer. It's been almost a year since I came to Korea. I've always been a sports enthusiast and also a music lover. In fact, football was a like a daily activity to me in college.

2. How did you find these clubs and join?
When I arrived here, I was afraid that I might lose touch and get sucked into to sedentary lifestyle that people so often talk about. Though, I was optimistic as I remembered seeing a small football field when I first visited Samsung for Orientation. There are lot of clubs that one can find in company portal and that was the first thing I did at work. Right away I joined a badminton club and a football club (which later turned out to be inactive for most part). The badminton club *was* fairly active, with games every Monday. The members were friendly and kind enough to lend us rackets on our first day when we didn’t have any.

Meanwhile, I started to look for opportunities to play football. I once saw few guys playing at one of the grounds and asked if I could join them someday. They agreed, but that day never came. My friend Omkar suggested that I could join a group with which he had played earlier. This was also the first time I realized that there is a Futsal (5 players each side instead of 10 in regular in a smaller area) field in Samsung. I went there, excited about the game and also wondering how well Koreans play . To my surprise, most of the players were foreign employees and were really good footballers too. They said they play regularly and added us to their Kakao group and then I joined their club.

3. How frequently do you play?
I started playing football/futsal with them around once a week on various grounds. These days we play much more frequently, around twice a week, sometimes on weekends too.

4. Are there any tournaments or competitions around?
I later learnt that there is a Samsung Digital City League with around 20 teams including players from Digital City and Hwaseong campus. It is quite popular among the footballers here in Samsung and they have matches every Wednesday. These matches can get really intense and interesting at times. The last game we played was a must win game for us, and we won it by scoring a goal in the last minute after a flurry of close shaves and unsuccessful attempts on goal. The league is well organized and conducted professionally with experienced referees for the games. There is another Samsung Bluewings cup (don't confuse this with the Suwon Samsung Bluewings team), which is a knock-out race-to-the-top tournament with matches held in the Hwaseong campus. There are other leagues too, but these two and regular friendly games are enough to keep me busy.

5. How do you think the club benefited you?
Firstly I've thoroughly enjoyed my football here. It's also a great way to stay fit (barring the injuries due to rough tackles :P) and a good way to break the monotony at work. Not only do I get to enjoy one of my favourite sport, this is also an opportunity to interact with people from different divisions (campuses too) and learn about their work, and also their culture and country. The following pic was taken after one of our usual games. This pic features players from 9 different countries. Talk about going global in Samsung :D

6. Any suggestions for non-Samsung employees about finding clubs?
Meetup is one good option to find similar interest groups.


P.S. We can play cricket/football some day if sufficient people are interested in joining