The Lost Generation

Noor Afshan Mirza, England

Noor Afshan Mirza, 58, is an artist, football coach, player-manager, teacher, filmmaker, mentor, and agent. As part of the ‘lost generation’ of ballers who did not have the opportunity to participate in the game, she now plays for Hot Flush FC and coaches the Frenford & MSA Women FC 11s girls' team. Noor is also a participant in The Women’s Football Leadership Programme, a six-month course led by Amnesty International UK that empowers women from refugee backgrounds to develop their skills and become future leaders.

My name is Noor Afshan Mirza. I am 58 and I am from London. My cultural roots are much further east than East London, where I spent my formative years as a young person. I am of British South Asian mixed heritage; my lineage is Persian Pakistani and Afghani Indian on my dad’s side, and Celtic, Irish Romani, and Scottish on my mum’s side. I come from a large family of first- and second-generation immigrants to England.

To talk about ‘my job’ is not possible in a singular mode. I have an intersection of roles in life that guide me in my day to day working life. I am a football coach, a football player-manager, an artist, a teacher, a filmmaker, a mentor, and an agent.

My football journey later on in life has been a real adventure and a gift. I often talk about football finding me, rather than the other way round!

As a young girl, I wanted to play football at primary school, and I was told NO, girls get to play netball. From that day forward, I got the message that football was not for me. I remember my first protest (I did not know it was a protest at the time) was to organise a game of football on the playground for me and my girlfriends.

I grew up with football all around me, but not for me! My brother played football at school and at university. As a family, we did not grow up watching football or going to games. Growing up in the 80s, the football fan culture in England was very racist and sexist, an unsafe place to be as a South Asian family in the stands.

I am from the ‘lost generation’ of ballers that did not get the opportunity to be a part of the game.

The Vintage Ballers

In my community, there is one main opportunity for women to participate in playing grassroots football, especially for those of us that are from the ‘lost generation’. On Saturday mornings, Ellie and Julie, two women in their 50s, hold an open access space for training and game time. This is where I kicked my first ball ever in life, in my mid fifties!

In amongst a mixed ability open access training session, Ellie and Julie hold an incredible safe space in which to enjoy the beautiful game. Week in, week out, they are there, in the rain, sun, and sometimes the snow, holding this space for women of all ages and abilities to come together to play football.

They are an integral part of building women’s access to football through a community-owned club called Clapton Community FC in Ilford. The club now has a women’s first team that plays in the league, reserves teams, girls’ youth teams, and women from the open access space have gone on to become coaches working at the club.

I met my team through the open access space at Clapton. My team is called Hot Flush FC, and we are the only team in the Super 5 League (5-a-side league) in East London that represents the ‘vintage baller’ women and non-binary players over the age of 35.

Football is my happy place.

Stepping Over The Sidelines

I heard about the Women’s Football Leadership Programme through my coaching mentor, Yasmin Hussain. I met Yasmin while playing against her in the Super 5 League. She saw my passion for football and invited me to “step over the sidelines” into coaching.

At first, I was very unsure I had anything to offer as I still feel I barely know the game, the rules, the culture of the game. Yasmin saw in me qualities that I did not see within myself. She guided me into another safe space where I could begin my coaching journey.

There is a lack of female coaches in the game, especially from underrepresented communities. This was something I could see, and I was happy to trust Yasmin to help her with her mission to change that. I joined the programme after Yasmin nominated me, and I felt honoured to be selected for a Leadership Programme in Women’s Football.

I do not know if I would have joined had I not been supported. I would have seen the programme and thought that it looked really interesting, but I would have felt that I was not eligible to apply for it!

What I enjoy most about the programme is the opportunity to meet so many truly inspiring women, including being mentored by Sandy Abi-Elias, a really incredible person doing a fantastic job of bringing so many amazing women together.

Football is community for me. Being part of a wider national network of women in leadership within our communities, within football, from the global majority, really feels like I am part of something exciting and supportive. It is a community I feel I can contribute, connect, and grow in as a person. I love it.

A Full Circle Moment

The Women’s Football Leadership Programme is helping me to build confidence through the mentoring process, connecting all the small daily acts of confidence I have but that I was not consciously aware of.

Being on a leadership programme is fully helping me realise that I too have leadership qualities. For example, I stepped over the sidelines into coaching in my community, not because I thought of myself as a leader, but because there was a need, and someone needed to step up. So I did. Through this programme, I can see that as an act of leadership.

I have also found out that I am good in the role of coach. I care about the girls’ development, I enjoy learning about the game from another perspective, and I celebrate with them, both our wins and our losses. They are so determined as a team, and I love to support them in the game they love to play.

The girls I coach at Frenford & MSA Women FC are around the same age as I was when I first wanted to play. It is a full circle moment to be able to support young girls from the South Asian community to have access to the game.

Kicking, Connecting, Belonging

As someone who is part of the ‘lost generation’ of women footballers, it feels incredible to finally play and coach the game I was once excluded from. It feels so natural to play football, to be so involved with the game, as a coach, a fan, and a player.

Football is a huge part of my confidence building in life. The feeling of scoring my first goal, I walked on air for three whole days, nothing could dampen my spirits.

I feel very grateful that I have the opportunity to be part of the game. To pass a ball to someone is a form of connection. I have the opportunity to connect with people from so many different ages, cultures and backgrounds.

I played football in the streets of Istanbul with a nine-year-old boy, passing the ball back and forth to each other, while the elders in the community watched. I am now also getting opportunities to travel the world through coaching and managing women players in football. Five years ago, this was inconceivable for me!

Flush The Pain Away

I photographed my team Hot Flush FC. We all have incredible names we have given each other that have come from the joy, connection, and the spirit of Hot Flush FC. It is the only team in the league that I play in that represents players over 35, and some of us, including myself, are a lot older than that.

I photographed Soccer Daddy Bells, one of the co-founders of Hot Flush FC, alongside Johanna. My name is Notorious Noor. We have Slick Kid Satu, our incredible goalkeeper Esther Disaster, Jet Lag Jess, José Josefine, Lisa Destroyer and Emma Roids.

Every person in my team is incredible. Not just because of their interesting lives, but they are very strong and incredibly caring at the same time. We all work in different fields, from lightning design to photography, acupuncture, teaching, social work, and working with asylum seekers and refugees. Everyone has a story, what brings them to the pitch, to football, and to Hot Flush.

Frantic Fran has started this amazing social space for us as a team where we can be with each other in a different way, which is called Flush The Pain Away. Once a month on Sundays, each one of us takes turns to organise activities, we can go on curated walks through special parts of our London, and we just share that with each other. There is no other agenda than just bonding in a different way than we do when we are playing football.

What I tried to capture in the photos is the spirit, the energy, the passion, and the sense of community.

Being Brave

Being brave on the field during a game has taught me to be brave in life. Football, in many ways, is 90% about how to show up for yourself and for others, and 10% technical skills.

I have embraced what it means to show up week in and week out, no matter what is going on in life, because you cannot let your team down! The game has taught me how to be consistent, and this is massive when I apply this to other parts of my life.

The overall confidence I have gained from going from never being able to pass a ball to being part of a team that was consistently losing to being crowned champions of the league last season.

Beyond football, I have taken this courage and applied it to other tasks. For example, when I went skiing for the very first time, I could feel the fear of looking at the slope and not knowing how to balance or move with the skis. I was terrified of falling. But I pushed myself to try it, even just once, and after a few falls, I gained confidence and I was skiing for the very first time in my life. I was able to do this because of the experiences of playing football. If I can play football at my age, I can do anything.

I have confidence in my body, knowing that I can at least try and see what happens. To not be afraid to try! It is not just in sport that I apply this attitude of not being afraid to try something new, it is now in every big and little challenge I at least try. I tell myself: I can.

Levelling The Playing Field

The significant changes from the 1980s to today is the sheer amount of young girls that are playing football regularly. They do not even think twice about playing - if they want to play, they play. Whereas that just was not feasible before; you were not encouraged, you were not able to play. Now if you want to play football as a girl you can.

The sheer presence of seeing women’s football on television and in stadiums, sold-out stadiums, has changed. And the fan culture is much more diverse, not just in terms of gender, but in terms of ethnicity and race as well.

There is still more that is needed, and that needs to continue and to be sustained. There is still sexism, racism, misogynoir. There are still all the problems that were there in the 1980s, but they are not there in the same scale.

It is not something you can just sit back on. Feeling safe as a woman, feeling safe as a woman of colour in the stands, it is important that this is still ongoing work. It is everyone’s collective responsibility to make football accessible, inclusive, and a safe space.

We also need more support for women and sports, with innovations like boots that are made for women. It needs to be designed for the female athlete, the female footballer, from the beginning. It is not the hand-me down boots and jerseys that are made for men. It is the kits, boots, and everything you need to support you as a footballer, in the grassroots as well as in the professional game, designed and made for the women’s game. That needs to be prioritised and needs more investment.

We also need more spaces where women and girls can gather, not necessarily bars, but more social spaces are needed to enjoy the football culture, and to participate in making football culture that is beyond the stadium and beyond the pub.

There are so many federations around the world that do not value women’s football. I want to see more boys wearing jerseys with women’s names on their backs. Growing up, my generation always wore a jersey with a male players’ name on them. But now, I am seeing dads take their daughters to games, wearing shirts with names like Lucy Bronze.

I want to get a jersey with Kira Rai’s name on it, she is the first Sikh-Punjabi woman to play for Derby. I hope that there will be more diversity of names on jerseys across the game. And that there is so much diversity within the game that you do not question it.

I want to see more investment in the women’s game, from personal to societal and club investment. I want to see the women’s game really valued on that basis as well, not just talked about, but actually invested in. Giving it as much support and investment as the boys’ and men’s game gets.

Not Just A Man’s Game

My hope for the future is that there are more of us in the game at every level. I would like to see more mums stepping over the sidelines and coaching their sons and their daughters. I would like to see more women from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds with lived experiences, like ours, participating at all levels of the game. I want to see us in football, whether playing, watching, or engaging in other aspects of the game, such as journalism, content creation, and working within clubs or communities.

My hope is that barriers for participation are completely removed. I would like to see more support for women from our backgrounds, to take up roles, and take up space. Football for me is 90% life skills and 10% technical skills, and we have a lot of life skills to share within the game!

My hope for the future is that girls are more than supported and encouraged to play. It is a game, but it is such a beautiful game, and for me football teaches so much about life and it is such an incredible way to engage with values in life. I hope that girls’ participation in football, and girls’ participation in sports, from the community, grassroots, all the way through to the professional level, is actually more than supported; it is actually respected, not questioned, not undermined, but really valued.