“She’s just so cool.” “Is that her? Is that really her? I didn’t think she was that blonde.” “Even her clothes are cool.” Alessia Russo is a footballing Pied Piper and the teenage girls following her down the path from the five-a-side pitches to the full-size one at Haringey’s New River Leisure Centre can’t contain their excitement.
Russo has just watched the final of the Alessia Cup, an evolution of an annual girls’ tournament organised by the London-based charity Goals 4 Girls. This year it was staged in partnership with Russo’s newly launched Alessia Russo Foundation and Sky. The broadcaster’s involvement comes in the wake of its Public First report, which found that girls in the UK are missing out on 280 million hours of sport every year.
