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As a young footballer, Saddiqa Shan had to catch three buses to get to a training session. Many girls without a club nearby, quite understandably, drift away from the game. Saddiqa stuck with it – and in the end, to make sure the next generation of players in her area had better opportunities, she started her own club.

Just six years later, Lichfield City Ladies FC have clambered to tier 5 of the English league pyramid – and hundreds of female footballers in south Staffordshire, who might otherwise have missed out, have had a chance to play the game and follow their passion.

Saddiqa is determined to provide the best possible experience for the players who join her club. As a Women in Football member she's been awarded a free place on the FA's Introduction to Coaching course, made possible by WIF's partnership with PepsiCo. When the news reached her that she was selected for the programme, her reaction was one of delight.

"Honestly, I was over the moon! I knew there'd have been a lot of interest, especially off the back of the EUROs success, so I was elated to have been one of the people who were successful with their application. I was excited and keen to get started!"

For Saddiqa the coaching course will be the next chapter in an ongoing football journey that dates back to early childhood. She was five or six years of age the first time she kicked a ball, and the experience that followed will be familiar to many. "I distinctly recall being the only girl on the school football team in primary school," she says. "At that time it just wasn't the done thing."

 

Challenges

Moving up to secondary school, Saddiqa "did a few stints with some academy clubs", and it was at this point that the difficulties in reaching a training centre from her home became clear. "There weren't many clubs available in terms of what you could access, other than your big names, like your Blues, your Villas, your West Broms. So it was difficult to find a club more local, more accessible than that."

After a few years as a player for her university and with Solihull Moors, Saddiqa took the plunge in 2016 and enlisted a committee to help her establish Lichfield City Ladies (nicknamed the Spire Girls for the cathedral city's most recognisable landmark). The early challenges were considerable – not least on the financial side.

"Funding is obviously an issue," she says. "Finding the volunteers to help coach and manage the club can be quite challenging. In the first couple of years we managed to just stay afloat. there's not many clubs that manage to survive, so there were a few concerns about us possibly folding, not being able to recruit the players, being a relatively new outfit."

But the club has thrived – establishing itself in the Premier Division of the West Midlands Regional Women's Football League. "We're attracting all sorts of players – ex-Wolves, big-name players from big clubs who are happy to come and play for us. We've now got a reserve or development team as well, so our backroom staff is growing, the attraction is growing, and we're doing quite well for ourselves at the moment."

 

Unheard of

Geography wasn't the only challenge Saddiqa faced as a young player. "I was from the generation of players where it was very unheard of for women to be playing," she recalls, "and it was very much like 'girls shouldn't be playing, women shouldn't be playing football'. So that was difficult, growing up. Then, of course, being a Muslim and being of an ethnic minority background, all the things associated with that play a part – societal views and expectations on what it is to be a British Muslim participating in things like that. People don't necessarily agree with that. It just wasn't the done thing, it wasn't an acceptable thing.

"Many a time growing up, there were times when I was told that I shouldn't be playing football. Various comments were made to my family about the fact that I was playing football – you ought to have a word with your daughter, or your sister, she shouldn't be doing things like that. The same old narrative, really – I'm sure I'm not the only one who's experienced that! But it really is quite satisfying and quite pleasing to see how far the game has come and to see the increase in participation from ethnic minority backgrounds."

The positive outlook continues for grassroots participation with an upsurge in both interest and finance following the success of UEFA Women's EURO 2022 in England. Saddiqa is especially happy with the increase in prize money awarded from the Women's FA Cup, which makes a tremendous difference for clubs operating at the level of Lichfield.

"The buzz around the EUROs win has continued," she confirms. "Off the back of that we had a lot of interest from younger players. So a lot of youth players who may previously have fallen out of love with the game watched the EUROs and it reignited the passion in them to grab their boots and get back out there playing – whether on a competitive level or just to be able to participate in a more relaxed environment, just to be around people. So that's been brilliant.

"What's also been hugely beneficial is the change to the FA Cup structure. So as you can imagine, at tier 5, the whole thing is run by volunteers and we rely on sponsorship to finance that, and the prize money for the FA Cup has increased tenfold. We played our first FA Cup game last weekend. Whereas in previous years the prize money for that may have been in the region of £300 to £400, this year it was £3,000. Things like that are huge for a grassroots-level club like ourselves where we're having to fund pitch hire – which in this day and age is so expensive, and to fund referees' costs, and to be able to source kit for the players, to give them the best of the best, so that their experience at this club can be maximised.

"So it's been great! We're definitely seeing the effects of that still, and there's been an increase in participation, an upturn in people coming to training – so yeah, it's great to see a lot of youth coming through."

 

The right way

While the Introduction to Coaching course will clearly open up new opportunities for Saddiqa in football, her ambitions as a coach will have profound benefits for her club and players. Knowing that Lichfield City Ladies are developing young hopefuls in the right way is vitally important to her, and Women in Football's coaching programme with PepsiCo can play a huge part.

Saddiqa explains: "For a lot of my generation, coaching has been hands-on without necessarily being attributed to a formal qualification, as it were. So throughout my footballing journey, whether that's as a player or a club committee member, there's always been an element of coaching involved, but without any formal qualifications to help support that. So there's always been a bit of a question mark in the back of my mind as to whether the way I've been doing things has been the right way.

"So I was definitely interested in doing this qualification and more, just to get a better understanding of how we can deliver better and be sure that we are doing it the right way – to get the best out of our players and to maximise the limited time that we do have in training sessions. So it's of huge interest to me and hopefully this is just the beginning. I do have ambitions to go on to do further qualifications – I'd certainly like to get to a point where I'm at least at UEFA B licence coaching. I'm getting a little bit older now – it pains me to say it! – so I have to explore other avenues of how I can still have a hand in the game, because I'm not quite ready to call it quits just yet."

As for the wider picture of women's participation in coaching, Saddiqa is equally enthusiastic. "During my footballing career, growing up, I didn't come across any female coaches. I had one female manager,  from the age of 18 upwards, but that itself was a rarity in women's football. So I'm very much pro women coaching the game. I think it's great for female players to be able to relate to their coaches a little bit more. They can be role models. And it helps to bridge all sorts of gaps that you might have, or answer questions you might have, which can hold people back from participating."

Women in Football will be providing regular updates on some of the 45 aspiring coaches who are taking part in the FA's course under our partnership with PepsiCo – so please keep an eye on this website and our social media channels to follow the progress of Saddiqa and her colleagues. We wish them all well.

More about the Women in Football coaching programme with PepsiCo

Lichfield City Ladies FC website

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