From the grassroots to the senior national team, what’s the state of women’s football in India?

Whether it is a bunch of teenagers in a Bengal village or the players in the senior national team, women footballers in the country harbour big dreams despite the many challenges along the way

For 18-year-old Manasi Sardar, the day starts at 4 am. She lives with her farmer parents in a small village in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas, which is approximately two hours from Kolkata. Having dropped out of her school due to financial constraints, Sardar begins the morning with chores at home and then rushes off for football practice. She is only faintly aware of the 2022 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup that is due to take place in India from October 11 but harbours hopes of playing for the national team some day.

“I was introduced to football at my school where boys and girls played together. I fell in love with the game and although I had to eventually drop out of school, my parents are supportive of my sporting dreams and are helping me pursue football,” Sardar tells me in Bengali when I catch her in the middle of practice run by a women's football enthusiast in Kolkata.

It’s around 8.30 pm then and the left-winger has to take an hour-long public bus back to where her bicycle is parked and then ride for another hour to get home. “It’s a long journey back but coming here means that I get to train so I am ready to do it,” adds Sardar. She is joined here by her training mate, 17-year-old Astomi Munda, who is preparing for her class ten examinations while learning how to kick up a storm as a midfielder on the football turf. “My school does not have a girls’ team but I used to tag along with this senior who played and slowly picked up the game,” she recounts. Sardar and Munda have two things in common–they both love football and want to play the sport professionally.

“Wearing shorts and playing a boy’s sport”

Munda and Sardar, they tell me, also want to become like “Bala Devi, who plays for India and that foreign club”. I am not surprised as Ngangom Bala Devi is a bit of a football superstar with many firsts to her name. The 32-year-old grew up in Manipur’s Bishnupur district, playing with the local boys, with some help from her father, who is a former football player. “Everyone from my family–including my brother and twin sister–were into sports but could not pursue it due to financial constraints. However, I continued with great difficulty and support from my parents,” says Devi. Since then, she has not only become one of India’s most successful strikers but also the first Indian woman footballer to sign a professional contract with a European club when she joined Rangers, the Scottish Women's Premier League club, in 2020.

Though Devi is a success story for players at the grassroots such as Munda and Sardar, one thing that all three have in common is the unwavering support of their families. While Munda and Sardar have both had to face criticism in their respective villages for “wearing shorts and playing a boy’s sport,” both sets of parents have gone out on a limb to support the girls. “My father told me to go on playing and now, my neighbours have at least stopped objecting to my face,” Sardar tells me. Even for Devi, when others in her hometown started commenting on her age and how she should have stopped playing, her family kept her going as she made it big, one tournament at a time.

Money matters

However, according to Devi, after all the years of successfully playing for Manipur and for India, she has finally reached a point where she is financially comfortable. “It was very difficult at the beginning despite me starting to play for both U-17 and the senior team since 2005, and the U-19 side in 2006 and 2007. Nike sponsored me for a bit and currently I am signed on by Puma. It is only now that I am getting these opportunities but without financial support, it is difficult for younger Indian women footballers to get started,” she adds.

Twenty-three-year-old Jyoti Chouhan’s journey also tells the same story of perseverance in the face of difficulties. She started playing football in her village in Madhya Pradesh at 4.30 am daily without proper shoes. “I got my first pair of football shoes from the district when I participated in a local tournament after a year,” she recalls. Though she had support from her family, the sudden demise of her father left Chouhan taking care of her mother and two sisters. “My extended family started pressurising my mother to get my sisters and me married but since my father used to support my dream, my mother did too,” she added. However, being the sole care-taker also meant that Chouhan would often have to travel back from distant places where she played, just to be able to be home for her family. This, despite her having played for junior Indian women’s teams in the past and two other professional Mumbai-based teams.

Young players like Munda and Sardar are also prime examples of how commercials play a huge role in breaking or making dreams. Sardar says that it costs her rupees 150 daily for her commute to and fro from Kolkata and that her father has to rely on her uncle for financial assistance when it gets tough for them to make both ends meet. While pilot projects run by certain state governments help such players to a certain extent, it is nearly not enough to keep them going. Football kits are expensive and the shoes wear off easily. “My father is a farmer and my mother is a housewife. I have a younger sister too. So I don’t know how long this can continue but I will play as long as I can,” asserts Munda.

A silver lining

However, Chouhan’s journey is set to take her to Croatia very soon as she is one of the two who recently got selected at a trial organised by Kolkata-based Women In Sports (WINS) initiative, where they were trained by the visiting coaches of five foreign clubs comprising Rangers WFC, ŽNK Dinamo Zagreb, Marbella FC, Western Sydney Wanderers FC and Melbourne Victory FC. Chouhan has now been signed by ŽNK Dinamo for pre-season and tryouts. The camp that is the first trial of its kind for Indian women footballers in India was organised by WINS for players from the senior national team and the Indian Women’s League.

“Rather than funding a couple of women footballers for trials abroad, we thought it was best to invite foreign coaches here and get them to see India’s best players together. We have so much talent in the country but not enough ways of helping these girls. We are looking forward to the girls gaining valuable experience abroad and giving back to the sport in India,” says Sanaya Mehta, founder, WINS.

Meanwhile, more tournaments, more such camps and financial support are what both experienced players like Devi and younger ones such as Sardar are hoping for. While Devi is optimistic about the performance of the U-17 squad, she says, “Though things have changed a lot now, more tournaments will not only provide more match-practice but also more scope for training. There can’t just be one women’s league because more players need exposure at the grassroots level.”

The All India Football Federation (AIFF) seems to be listening. “The Hero Indian Women's League has been a great boon, and a lot of our national team players have come through that. Right now, we are looking at restructuring women's football at the domestic level as well. We would want to make it a longer league with more matches, which will definitely help our players even further,” shares Sunando Dhar, deputy secretary general, AIFF. An U-17 league for women and a number of other junior tournaments are also in the works, according to him.

While the likes of Sardar and Munda are definitely raring to go if they get a fair shot at their dreams with help from the AIFF and other stakeholders, India’s U-17 women’s squad is in the middle of an exposure tour in Spai before they head back home for the World Cup. “We are playing against two of the best countries in women's football–the USA and Brazil–along with Morocco as well. But we have a bunch of quality footballers on our side, and we hope to give a good account of ourselves to the rest of the world,” says Dhar, commenting on the team’s prospects. Well, here’s hoping that our girls do us proud–and that we can do better for women’s football in India!

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