Gareth Southgate has probably had warmer welcomes. When the England men’s manager emerged to greet 50 teenage girls at St George’s Park this week, he was met by screams of excitement. At least two of them. There was some polite clapping as well. But the general response, it is fair to say, was something closer to bemusement.
Southgate took it on the chin. He smiled and chatted with the young women who, in turn, warmed up and peppered him with questions. Largely teenagers from marginalised communities, they were at the England base to learn coaching and leadership skills as part of a programme run by the group Football Beyond Borders. That they may not have instantly recognised the men’s boss is perhaps not surprising. But they all love the game and could hold the answer to increasing diversity in women’s football.
The Lionesses’ achievements at the World Cup have provoked inevitable and recurring questions of legacy. Primary among them is how to use this success, at the very top of the game, to bring more women from ethnic minority backgrounds and those from lower socioeconomic grades (and those who are both) into the game. In Emma Hayes’s words, the system for developing female talent in England is a “prawn sandwich girls football club”. But there are people working hard to change that.
Football Beyond Borders is a group that sees football as a tool to achieve social change. They work with “young people from areas of socioeconomic disadvantage who are passionate about football but disengaged at school” and use the game as a means of helping them acquire necessary skills. The girls at the camp have been recruited from within FBB’s existing schools programme. The sessions are funded by the FA and Nike and delivered by a collaboration of coaches; from FBB, the FA and professional game-focused organisation the Powerhouse Project.
“Female leadership is important,” says Rosie Kmita, who founded the Powerhouse Project with her twin sister, Mollie. “It’s empowering for me to see someone who looks like me, who’s young, driven and confident enough to stand in front of a room and do what she does best.
“I’m so passionate about getting more girls into the game because I understand the life skills that come with that. Being in and around a team environment at a young age creates absolute powerhouses. I truly believe that.”
The Powerhouse Project looks to develop women on their path into becoming coaches, with the ultimate aim a job within the professional industry. One of their success stories is Jessica King, a former player with Lewes, Everton and Charlton who completed her Uefa B licence training with funding from the project and now works as a coach with Brighton in the Women’s Super League.
King, who is of dual heritage, says she had never had a coach who wasn’t white until Hope Powell delivered a session as part of the Powerhouse Project. Like Kmita, King believes that role models play a crucial role in developing aspiration, but also that female-led environments are critical for cultivating confidence in a male-dominated sport. Fewer than half the head coaches in the WSL are women.
“The beautiful thing about the women’s game is how together everybody is,” King says. “You see that at the World Cup and that’s why I think there is the space to include more people. If you only have only one type of person in charge you’re only seeing one type of thing.
“Women doubt themselves a lot. [Change] starts with knowing that there is a pathway for me, because other people have done it. The more people from certain socioeconomic or ethnic backgrounds are there, the bigger that space is. It is changing society as well as football, and I think that’s the beauty of it. It’s why I love football.”
Samerah Preddie, 17, and Zulua Toussaint, 15, are two students on the FBB programme. Preddie is outgoing and gregarious, with one eye on a career in the media. Toussaint is never far from a ball, constantly doing kick-ups in-between sessions. Both agree that they have benefited from having an enthusiasm for football and a chance to learn in a female-led environment.
“If I’m playing in a game with a lot of boys I would tend to just disappear into the background,” Preddie says, “[But] as I’ve grown up I’ve seen there’s so much more to football than just getting on a pitch. All the friendships you make, and all the things you can do in relation to it.”
For Toussaint the experience of playing mixed football was even more challenging, with boys “just discrediting anything a woman does”, she says. “When I used to play with boys it was: ‘How are you letting a girl beat you?’ and stuff like that. Here you don’t have that, you just have conversations about football. Me and my friend were saying earlier that we have never seen so many young girls into football in one space before. It was a big realisation for us.”
The numbers included in these schemes are small and the chances of turning the experience into a career are limited. But in the midst of the group, enthusiasm is infectious, and a women’s game that is both inclusive and works on its own terms feels possible.
