Long read: Delhi’s Women’s Football League has lawyers, teachers, mothers as players. It’s a safe space

For decades now Delhi has enjoyed a bad reputation in terms of what it offers working women. In recent years however things have begun to change. This lovely story in The Print by Udit Hinduja (a graduate from the first batch trained at The Print School of Journalism) captures changes in Delhi that we can believe in. Mr Hinduja writes: “Now in its third edition, Delhi’s Women’s Football League is growing one pass at a time…This is women’s football in Delhi – fast, tactical and just enough competitive.

“I couldn’t find any women to play with in the city,” said Aneesha Labroo, 33, who took the initiative to set up casual, all-women games in 2019 with her friend Shayoni Nair. “We started off with a WhatsApp group, then organised a bootcamp and finally launched a Women’s Football League.”

The Delhi league is slowly giving a new character to neighbourhood football. And they don’t want to make it overly competitive, which can turn away a first-timer. It’s not just the game that has become a reason for women to unite. The 100×60 metre ground is their safe space.”

So how did two women – Aneesha Labroo & Shayoni Nair – start a successful football league in a city infamous for being unsafe for working women? “The concept wasn’t new. Delhi already had women’s football tournaments, but these were mostly for professional players and poorly organised. There was no structure to it, with games played at random times on unkempt grounds.

Launched in February 2020, the six-team league stood out for its beginner-friendly approach. It brought together women from all walks of life – students, corporate lawyers, Teach for India fellows, and e-commerce managers.

“It literally became our lives,” said Labroo, adding that there was almost no natural overlap among the different age groups and professions. “These were people who we would never have come across regularly. The one thing that brought us together was football.””

What’s interesting is not just the fact that hundreds of women in Delhi want to play football but also that there is an audience which wants to watch them and cheer for them. That in turn led to sponsors lining up: ““Our viewership was insane,” said Labroo, “Whether it was a partner, parents or siblings, people showed up to support the girls.”

Sponsors recognised the opportunity too. Lalit Hotels, Vanilla Moon, and Nourish Organics were among the brands that came on board for the inaugural edition. Each brand was responsible for a team, with jerseys carrying the brand’s logo.

Labroo and Nair didn’t get carried away with the commercialisation of the league. Sponsors were required to keep the engine running, but the focus was always on building a community and getting beginners involved in the sport.”

Then Labroo & Nair did something very clever. Credit to Udit Hinduja for spotting this and describing it clearly: ““In a lot of other tournaments, you can sign up with your own team,” said Labroo, explaining that this gives teams an unfair advantage as they can stack up their starting eleven with experienced players. “We wanted to keep ours fair and give a chance to beginners.”

So, before the league, a skills day was set aside to check each player’s ability, rated on their dribbling, passing, and shooting. Professional coaches were brought in from Train With Lefty, a South Delhi-based football training academy. Players were assigned to one of three tiers, based on their rating. Teams had to field at least one beginner in every game.

“It was really stressful,” said Nair, laughing about the high-octane situation of captains using a draft format to select players. “You wanted the best, so I spent 3-4 days trying to create the ideal team.”

The third edition of the league kicked off on 13^th April. Now, not only are corporate sponsors fully on-board but a not-for-profit dimension is also emerging: “Many of the women paid the participation fee of Rs 2,000 for girls from underprivileged backgrounds. A group of 10 school girls participated in the league through the Khel Khel Mein Foundation (KKM), a Delhi-based NGO that provides structured sports programmes to vulnerable youth.

“What we lack in India is exposure to competitive game time,” said Anirban Ghosh, a trustee of KKM. “An under-8 or under-12 player in European countries will get at least 2,500 minutes of game time. In India, even a top-level under-15 player will struggle to get 1,000 minutes.” This gap widens as time goes by.

KKM has successfully trained girls to play professionally, some of who have gone on to play at the national level. For Ghosh, providing the foundation’s girls with game time was key. The Women’s Football League helped with that….

“I left work early to make it for this game,” said Kanika, 38, a Delhi-based lawyer who picked up the sport in her thirties. “We have a super group of people to play with. There’s a real sense of camaraderie in these games and they’ve become an integral part of life.”

The sense of community is evident in their body language. The women look at ease in each other’s company. Red and white bibs are distributed evenly, creating the two teams. Each team has one professional player for this match.

Jyoti Burrett, 35, a national-level footballer who still plays in the Delhi Premier League, sees these games as a chance to continue training in the off-season. As the stakes aren’t as high, she can have fun.”

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