The global clubs reclaiming the pitch and showing the world that football is a girl’s game.

<a href="https://www.instagram.com/baesianzfc/">Baesianz FC</a>, London&nbsp;
Embroidery artist Nicole Chui grew up in Hong Kong playing football from the age of eight, but lost her passion for the game after relocating to London for university. The local football culture didn’t provide her with the validation she had hoped for in the space.&nbsp;
“I didn’t feel like I fit in with the image of what a football fan supposedly looks like,” she says. It wasn’t until many years later, in 2019, that she finally felt comfortable picking up where she left off, joining a newly formed grassroots club in east London.&nbsp;
During the pandemic, Chui realized that she was the only person of color showing up to practice each week. Inspired by the <a href="https://www.goat.com/editorial/anti-asian-hate-crimes-resource-guide-aapi-reading">STOP ASIAN HATE</a> movement, she began looking for ways to bring her community together through sport.&nbsp;
“I met Sami Kimberley and Sarah Khan—founders of Asian Art collective <a href="https://baesianz.com/">Baesianz</a>—at a birthday party in February, and because I had such a positive experience playing at a grassroots level, I thought we could maybe join forces to create an Asian heritage-focused football club,” says Chui. A few days later, they started a Whatsapp group and Baesianz FC was born: within the first week of communicating the project on Baesianz’ Instagram account, they had over 70 signups.&nbsp;
Currently playing in the Goalposts League, the project has racked up enough subscriptions to form two teams at the beginner and intermediate level. Blending their love for art with sports, Baesianz FC is charting its own path.&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.instagram.com/nuttyfc_/?hl=en">Nutty FC</a>, Seoul&nbsp;
As a young girl growing up in South Korea, Nutty FC’s founder Jyhun Jung always had a hard time finding teams to play on due to the prevalent idea that football was a boys’ sport. She was able to join a club while in college, only for her options to expire after graduation.
Inspired by the growing global women’s football movement, she founded an amateur club in 2019 with the goal of changing the exclusionary culture of football that she experienced as a child. Aside from watching and playing the game together, Nutty FC aims to promote the game through creative means.&nbsp;
“We are trying to embody and promote a positive message as well as a courageous mindset,” says Jung. “For us, the medium is football. We express a story both on and beyond the football pitch, while giving people the courage to take on their own challenges in” their lives,” Jyhun writes over email. 
 
With 30 active members, the team meets up once a week and practices whenever they are able to rent a pitch. Unfortunately, there aren’t many available in the city. The other times, they either play futsal in a smaller field or go for dinner.

Maradonne, Milan&nbsp;
It all started with a game of muretto—football’s version of squash—among friends during a summer vacation in Pachino for Milan-based grassroots club Le Maradonne.&nbsp;
Their name is a play on the late football virtuoso Diego Maradona and the word donne, which means “women” in Italian. “Before that night in 2020, I had never touched a football in my life,” says Olimpia, captain of the team. The next day, she was on the beach learning how to dribble, forming the team shortly after&nbsp;
Every girl that signed up was a first timer. After gathering enough players, a friend suggested they play at Centro Sportivo Sant’Ambrogio in the Navigli area of Milan. There they met their coach, Elisabetta, who boasted years of experience training young girls and managing youth football for Serie A giants, AC Milan.&nbsp;
“None of us even knew what the rules of the game were, but the adrenaline generated by that first meet-up was too powerful to ignore,” says Olimpia. , “We chose to stick with it and keep playing. That’s when Elisabetta committed to coaching us.”&nbsp;
From there, the team grew from 10 players to 15. “Having this project during the height of the pandemic, with the numerous lockdowns in Milan, was beautiful and really helped us cope,” says Olimpia. With time, the group’s skill level increased and they felt confident enough to participate in tournaments, even winning&nbsp;a few.&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.instagram.com/exceptional_women_fc/">Exceptional Women and Average Men</a>, New York City&nbsp;
The American grassroots football scene differs greatly from the rest of the world. While it is fairly easy to find male-led creative football collectives and plenty of sophisticated, design-oriented amateur leagues for men, female-centric clubs are far less common. Additionally, the lack of public space for pickup games hinders the opportunity for inclusive street football. . 

But unlike the European scene, women have the chance to experience the game by participating in mixed-gender leagues alongside men. Exceptional Women and Average Men started a decade ago with the goal of countering an often problematic rule enforced in these leagues: two women must be on the field at all times.&nbsp;
“[The] rule is supposed to be a positive thing to make sure teams don’t show up to mixed-gender leagues with a squad full of men,” says Daniel McCallum, club founder. “Unfortunately, it often has the opposite effect as teams tend to include two girls maximum.”,” Meeting at various parks throughout the city weekly, the squad—as the name sarcastically states—mixes exceptional female footballers with some okay men, playing in the NYC Footy League, NYC’s largest adult football league.

<a href="https://www.instagram.com/leshijabeuses/?hl=en">Les Hijabeuses</a>, Paris&nbsp;
Supported by the patronage of community-driven nonprofit Alliance Citoyenne, Les Hijabeuses was born in February 2020. The club was founded with the mission&nbsp;to support hijabi women who want to play football in France, countering the French Football Federation’s ban on hijab.
“I understood I couldn’t play football at a professional level at 17 years old,” says <a href="https://www.goat.com/en-gb/editorial/goat-psg-people-of-paris">Karthoum Dembelé</a>, communications manager of the team. “I could play for whatever club I wanted and train with them, but the problem presented itself on game day. Each Saturday you’d get to the match with a pit in your stomach, not because you were scared to lose but because you didn’t know if the referee would allow you to play [wearing a hijab],” she continues.&nbsp;
Taking a strong stand against the Islamophobic policy rule, the organization presented an official legal appeal against the FFF in November 2021. Acting more like a sisterhood than a traditional football club, Les Hijabeuses offer refuge to Muslim women beyond what they may go through on the pitch.
“Since joining Les Hijabeuses, I have realized how many injustices afflict us hijabis in the world of sport,” says Imen, a player on the team and press manager. “Thanks to the team’s mission, I was able to meet with other women like me each week and play a sport, while asking questions about our rights. The club allowed me to reclaim control over my daily life and sports activity.”&nbsp;
Their message is clear, as encapsulated by the club’s Instagram hashtag: #LetUsPlay.

Inside the Grassroots Women’s Football Movement

The new vanguard of experimental artists and cultural provocateurs taking Switzerland’s most orderly city by storm.

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Inside the Grassroots Women’s Football Movement