Team Talks: Aneesha Dewshi

Team Talks' is a new content series on Versus that gives a platform to some of the most important and influential football communities in the game to tell their stories in their own words. As members of the adidas Football Collective, each group is doing its part to make football a more tolerant and inclusive space for everyone. This time out, Aneesha Dewshi of Romance FC writes about how her football club wants to ensure that young girls, women and non-binary folk always have somewhere to play football.

Being a woman often means you’re likely to be treated differently from your male counterparts. As a South Asian woman, the odds are even higher. I have lived that experience my whole life. Sexism and prejudice hits even harder when it happens within a space that you’ve loved your entire life. For me, that’s football.

I have loved and played the game for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I first started playing with a group of boys who I used to get picked up from school with. Our parents would always be late so we would burn time playing football between parked cars. The more I played, the more I wanted to learn, so I started watching games with my dad. He really loved the game. No favourite team, just loved to watch it and appreciate it. But I wasn’t the same! I had to have a team. I fell in love with Manchester United. They were winning all the time and had an amazing player in Eric Cantona who had me spellbound. My favourite player of all-time. He had a technique and swagger that made everything seem special.

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