FIFA Women's World Cup 2023: Rural football raises the stakes for the women's game in India

Young footballers at the Anantapur Sports Academy run by the Rural Development Trust, which organises the biggest rural football league in the country.

As the famous league football kicks off in Europe next month, a district in Andhra Pradesh, too, is getting ready to embark on its own competitive version of the Beautiful Game. Anantapur Football League begins in August and ends in December every year, a championship as long as the Indian Super League, albeit played between clubs in villages spread across Anantapur district. Twenty-eight clubs field teams in seven age-groups from U-7 to U-18, making the competition the biggest rural football league in the country.

The Anantapur Football League, which runs from August to December every year, saw the participation of 2,743 players, including 907 girls aged between seven and 18, last year.

The Anantapur Football League is also one of the biggest events in the game in the country for women's football. Nearly a thousand girls take part in the league donning jerseys representing the colours of their village clubs. For the young girls, playing football also means taking on discrimination, inequalities and lack of opportunities in rural regions.

Run every year from 2014, Anantapur Football League saw the participation of 156 rural clubs which fielded 2,743 players aged between seven and 18 last year. Among them were 907 girls. While U-11 to U-18 teams play the league based on a format similar to European leagues, U-7 and U-9 teams in Anantapur compete in mixed-gender seven-a-side matches, a rarity in Indian football.

"Women's football is growing in India. There were no opportunities for girls from rural areas before. Village girls like me are getting the chance to play today," says Anjali Devi, 25, the head coach of the Anantapur Sports Academy's residential football programme for girls. "Seven of our girls are playing in the super division in Bengaluru," adds Devi, the first female C licence coach in Andhra Pradesh whose family lives in Kalyandurg, about 400 km from Andhra Pradesh's capital Amaravati.

Devi was 14 when she started playing football in her village school. When the Kalyandrug FC, a rural football club that is part of the Anantapur Football League, was created in 2014 she was quick to join. A goalkeeper, she went on to represent Andhra Pradesh senior women twice before becoming a coach. In the Indian Women's League this year, Devi was the goalkeeping coach for Mumbai Knights FC. When the Anantapur Football League begins next month, Devi will be busy scouting for talent for the residential football programme, which supports rural girls for education and football at the Anantapur Sports Academy.

"Women's football is undergoing development in India and in the coming years our country will be playing in the FIFA World Cup," says M Anusha, a Class XI student who is one of the 19 girls in the residential football programme at the Anantapur Sports Academy. After their daily training, Anusha and fellow footballers rush to watch the ongoing FIFA Women's World Cup matches in Australia and New Zealand set up on a big screen on the campus.

Anusha, a Class XI student, was first spotted by the Anantapur Sports Academy scouts when she was playing in the mixed-gender tournament for Atmakur FC, a village football club, six years ago. A central midfielder, she was the highest scorer and voted the Player of the Tournament in the same year. Only 16, Anusha signed this year for Kemp FC in Bengaluru, a women's club that plays in the Bengaluru football super division league.

"In our villages children love playing football," says Ramanjaneyalu, who is in-charge of the Lepakshi FC, a football club in Pulamathi village, about 100 km from Anantapur. "In the last nearly one decade, the rural league has created an environment for development of sports. Young children watch the girls going for training and matches and want to play football," he adds. "The number of children at the grassroots who want to play football is growing," he adds. Last year, Lepakshi FC became the winner of the U-18 girls for the first time, after failing to win any matches in the first years of the club, which today has 136 players, 50 of them girls.

Spanish woman footballer Anaïr Lomba (top row middle) poses for picture with girls from the Anantapur Sports Academy's residential football programme.

"The Anantapur Football League is an annual league for grassroot community clubs," says Sai Krishna, director, Anantapur Sports Academy. "The academy's vision is to leverage the power of sport to achieve sustainable social change among the underprivileged and marginalised children and youth of rural Anantapur," adds Krishna.

The teams, which are divided into four zones based on their geographical location, play home and away matches like the European leagues in their zone for each age category every weekend. The top two teams from each zone and age group qualify for the final round, called super league, held at Anantapur Sports Village.

The Anantapur Football League owes its origin to the Anantapur Sports Academy founded in 2000 as a sport for development programme by Rural Development Trust (RDT), a not-for-profit social organisation for empowering rural communities launched in 1969 by Spanish social activist Vicente Ferrer and British journalist Anne Ferrer, a recipient of the Jamnalal Bajaj Award for women empowerment in 2015. Today, the academy's outreach extends to 8,022 children and youth through football and seven other sporting disciplines like cricket, judo, hockey, kabbadi and tennis. In 2010, Spanish tennis great Rafael Nadal arrived in Anantapur to open RDT's first tennis school.

"In the middle of last century, Anantapur was one of the most backward rural areas in the country," says Vamsi Krishna, Grassroots Development Coordinator at Anantapur Sports Academy. "That was one reason why Vicente and Anne Ferrer came to Anantapur," he adds. The Ferrers founded RDT in 1969 and ran food for work programmes to help the rural communities in the district, one of the driest regions in the country. Vicente Ferrer passed away in 2009 while Anne Ferrer continues to serve as RDT's executive director.

Spanish woman footballer Anaïr Lomba, who played for Espanyol and Valencia in the Spanish women's league, visited the Anantapur Sports Academy in February this year.

Its links with Spain through the Ferrers are helping RDT in growing sports in Anantapur. The La Liga Foundation, created by the Spanish football league in 1983, is a partner of the trust. In February this year, the foundation helped organise the visit of Spanish woman footballer Anaïr Lomba, who played for Espanyol and Valencia in the Spanish women's league, to Anantapur Sports Academy. "She told us how to become a professional footballer," says Devi. Among the tips were making a plan, fitness and conditioning, diet and above all, listening to the coach's advice.