For hundreds of years, football has been a man’s game. Only recently has women’s football begun to gain more attention, and there’s still a long battle to be fought to achieve true equality for female footballers. 

One of the most important roles played in the push for gender equality in football is that of girls’ football, in creating opportunities for young girls to engage with the sport. The access to football clubs is a necessity for girls should equality ever hope to be achieved, and 13-year-old Alex Collinson, a member of both her school football team and her local one, has spoken about her own experiences with football and her views on the game in an exclusive interview. 

Kicking a ball around at age eight and playing for a team at ten, Collinson explains that she was drawn into football following the Women’s Euros in 2022, though her parents had pushed her to play prior to this. 

When asked if she felt there was inequality between girls’ and boys’ football at her school, and between women’s and men’s football in general, Collinson acknowledged that her league started later than that of the boys’ team at her school, limiting the number of games she could play in compared to her male counterparts. She also expressed the belief that stereotypes surrounding the quality of women’s football was a large barrier to equality, as well as issues with pay and harassment. She also stated that, should she ever have the opportunity to play professionally, she would use that as a platform to speak out against the inequality between men and women’s football. 

Collinson ended her interview with an invaluable piece of advice to any girls looking to play football- to find your local club or join your school team and to ‘throw yourself into it and really enjoy it’. 

The love of football Collinson demonstrates is not uncommon; there are many young girls across the country, and indeed the world, who feel the same passion for the game. Whilst equality in football has not been achieved yet, with such determined young women as Collinson and her peers ready to inherit the fight, there is an optimistic future on the horizon for women’s football. 

With such forces to be reckoned with as the young women Collinson represents, it is safe to say that football is no longer a game belonging solely to men. 

It is her game too.