Farishta Karimi kicks her first football at Athenlay FC

Priced out of stadiums and shut out of the sport for generations, women, disabled players and minority groups are flooding into grassroots football

Priced out of stadiums and shut out of the sport for generations, women, disabled players and minority groups are flooding into grassroots football

It’s a chilly Wednesday night in Peckham Rye, south London, and a 22-year-old woman wearing a black hijab, lemon sherbet-coloured Nike astros and a bright red bib is in a tight spot on Athenlay FC’s floodlit pitch. Two others are bearing down on her with alarming speed. Instinctively, coolly, she backheels the ball to her teammate, who shepherds it away from trouble and scores.

For those who know her backstory, it’s hard to overstate how meaningful this self-confident little move is. Because until 18 months ago, Farishta Karimi had never even run in public, let alone kicked a football. Growing up in ultra-conservative Afghanistan, all she and her friends could do was watch with envy as their male counterparts played. When she fled the country with her mother amid the US withdrawal, she ended up in the UK, and somehow found the courage to do what she’d been forbidden from doing her entire life.

After the session inside the small, pitch-side clubhouse, five of us drag plastic chairs into a circle. “At the beginning, I thought the club might not accept me,” Farishta says softly. “I thought because I’d never kicked a ball they’d laugh at me. But after two or three sessions I found it really encouraging; so supportive and welcoming. Now, Wednesday is my favourite day of the week – football makes me feel really free.”

At Athenlay FC , 4,000 miles from where she grew up, she has finally found her tribe; one made up of people twice her age, yes, but who have something significant in common with her: until recently, they were all excluded in some way from the world’s most popular sport.

“I grew up in Venezuela where there was a lot of machismo, a lot of expectation of what girls and women could do, and certainly what they could not do,” Farishta’s teammate Veronica Lenz, 46, says. “When I played my first competitive match here about five years ago I was absolutely terrified. But it was the comfort of knowing that all the women there were with me. We crossed a boundary that day that was so positive and uplifting,” she says. Since then, she’s never looked back.

“I grew up very differently from Farishta,” adds Sian Elliot, 40. “My brother played football, my dad took me to football but I’d never had the opportunity to play myself. My son plays though, and one day there was an end-of-season parents vs kids game and I smashed in three goals. One of the mums was friends with someone at Athenlay and said: ‘You have to come along.’”

Up and down the country, stories like those of the Athenlay women repeat again and again. Previously marginalised groups – whether women and girls, LGBTQ+ players, those with disabilities, or young people from minority or disadvantaged backgrounds – are driving a growth in grassroots football that’s nothing short of remarkable. It’s also powering a movement that can sometimes feel like a total rejection of what’s playing out at the top of the game.

It’s no secret that fans of Premier League clubs aren’t happy right now. With top-flight ticket prices, according to the Football Supporters’ Association, up by around 800% since the early-90s and a feeling that the game caters to broadcasters and investors more than its fans, some are turning away from it entirely.

“I think the word connection is really important here,” says Darren Bernstein from the Football Supporters Association, “because at a time when there’s a cost of living crisis, people don’t want to give their football up, but they’re being priced out. Sometimes the most important thing is not always the football, it’s about being part of that community.”

She somehow found the courage to do what she had been forbidden from doing her entire life