

One of them even told me that he was convinced I would not be able to be accepted by the team even if I had the skills. My biggest challenge is to convince male players to trust a female coach. Last month, you became the first women to train a male national football team. So we finally managed to overcome all those human and material obstacles.


Fortunately, the mother of one of my teammates promised her that she will come every two days to check on me and let her talk with me on her mobile phone (at that time we didn’t even have a landline). When I had to join the national team, my mother didn’t agree because it required me to travel a lot and sometimes sleep over with the team. My dad was dead at that time and he said he is gonna be l ike a father for me and protect me which made her accept. When the coach from my community asked me to join his team, he had to go to our home to convince her to let me continue. When I started to play in my neighborhood, we were living in a very conservative community and she was afraid of how the people would react to a girl who plays with boys in the streets. My mom was the biggest obstacle because I was very young when I had to make important decisions for my life, and I couldn’t have done so without her approval. What were the barriers you had to overcome to pursue your dream?
#Kawa kawa song meaning professional
In order to become a professional player, you need to follow a specific nutritional plan to improve your abilities and I couldn’t have afforded it otherwise. It was the first deal of this kind for a women professional player and it was a financial turning point for me because my club was supporting everything, from nutrition to training, which had a huge impact on my career and performances. The turning point was when I moved from Helwan club to Al Tayaran club. What took your career to the more professional level? Together, we won a lot of games, then I started to play with other women in the Halwan center, and I finally joined the women’s first professional league in 1997. But one day, while I took my brother to his football training, I met a coach who was convinced by my skills and asked me to join the male team. I got exposed to a lot of bullying because the perspective of a woman playing football was not very common back then. I started to play soccer in my neighborhood, at the time I was the only girl to play in the streets amidst a lot of boys and people were thinking it was not the right thing to do for a young girl. How did you start playing football? And how was it received by your surroundings? Firstly by joining a male ‘s team, then being part of the first women national team, till today becoming the first woman to train a male soccer’s national team with the Ideal Gold club of Gizeh. She has come a long way since then, turning her childhood dream into a professional career. But she moved to Cairo with her family in a neighborhood called Helwan at a very young age, a place where she started to play football in the streets with the young boys of her community. Faiza Heider grew up in Upper Egypt, an agricultural region in the South of Egypt quite underdeveloped.
