Falling In Love With Leighton Baines

Aliny Calejon, Brazil

Aliny Calejon is 27 and lives in Votuporanga, a small city in the countryside of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. She is a member of the Everton FC Brasil supporters club.

Football was my first love, as I grew up in a family full of football fanatics.

Playing Championship Manager / Football Manager was the one thing that I would do every day. On one of those days in 2005, I needed a new left-back for my team and after hours of looking for one I found Leighton Baines, who played for Wigan Athletic at the time.

Virtual Baines was insanely good and that made me curious about the real player, so I started watching Wigan matches just to see him play and instantly fell in love with his quality.

In 2007 he signed for Everton and that was when I started to watch Everton play. I was immediately hooked by the club, everything seemed right for me: the club, the players, the amazing supporters, the work in the community...everything!

I have been a proud Everton supporter ever since then and cannot thank Leighton Baines, my favorite player of all-time, enough for that.

I watch every single match, mostly at home by myself, and always wearing the pink away shirt from the 2010/2011 season.

This pink shirt has a lot of meaning for me. It was the first Everton kit I was able to buy. Everton shirts were not available to purchase here in Brazil, so I had to save a lot of money and buy one from the Everton website. I still have the photo of the day that shirt arrived.

When I saw that kit, I just knew I had to buy it.

Growing up being a massive sports fan I heard comments about me being a tomboy, or that sports should not be for women, or that I knew nothing about sports because I am a woman. So I loved the idea of combining everything together and wearing this very bright and beautiful pink shirt to show that I am a proud football fan and Everton supporter.

I connect with a lot of Evertonians on the internet, especially on Twitter. The online community is so vast and full of fans from all over Brazil and the world.

Finding more Everton fans in Brazil changed everything, honestly! I used to follow loads of social media accounts of supporters from other countries, but it did not feel the same. I felt like I was alone for years and years. And then suddenly I found all these people that were talking about the same things as me, and that was so exciting.

I was missing that Brazilian flavour that we have when speaking about football. It was just so beautiful to see everybody waking up early in the morning to comment on the matches on Twitter, talking about the news, the transfers. I felt like I belonged once again!

And it is even nicer to see that Everton has an official Twitter account in Portuguese. I think we all feel validated after all these years looking for other fans! The community is growing stronger.

I have always loved football. My parents and brother live and breathe football, so it was only natural for me to spend my afternoons watching any match that was on TV.

To this day we discuss everything, including Everton games. I don't think my parents would define themselves as Evertonians, but they do watch all the matches that are on TV, especially because of Richarlison!

I think that the main reason Brazilians love football is that it is democratic. To play you just need anything that slides on the floor and a pair of flip flops as the goal and that is exactly what we do in Brazil. You do not need many people and it does not matter who is playing, everybody can join.

We all grow up learning about the sport and playing on the streets or in clubs. It does not matter if you are rich or poor, you will have some access to football. It is also easy for the population to see themselves in the players as they are almost always from a challenging background.

I think Everton's motto (the People's Club) speaks to Brazilians a lot. Two of the most popular clubs here in Brazil, Corinthians and Flamengo, are known for following the same line and it is something that the majority of us are looking for.

Not only that, but Everton has been signing Brazilians for quite some time, and we are always curious to see our fellow countrymen like Jô, Richarlison, and Allan succeed outside of Brazil.

Unfortunately, I have not been to Liverpool yet. I had everything planned to go in 2020 and even bought plane tickets to Barcelona to visit my brother and then I would go to Liverpool to finally watch a game. But the pandemic hit, and I had to delay everything. Hopefully soon.

I try to watch Everton matches from anywhere. It doesn’t matter where I am, I pull my phone out and put the match on. My friends hate me for that, honestly! We will be at a restaurant and my phone will be tuned in to anything about Everton: matches, news, you name it.

My football life is almost 100% based on Everton!