The magnificent ten: how a squad of beginners became a team
Nobody expected in 2020 that a group of pre-teenage girls from a dozen different backgrounds would become a force in Thai U11 and U13 football. Here is the squad that did it.
The thing that stands out about this squad is not any one player. It is how hard all of them work for each other.
Nobody could have expected, when the club was founded in 2020, that a group of pre-teenage girls from a dozen different backgrounds would become a force in Thai U11 and U13 football - that teams who had never been beaten would suddenly have to fight to score. The club won its first trophy at the Harrow Youth U11 tournament in 2021.
The squad moved up to U13 in 2022, and in 2023 it did the thing that was not supposed to be possible: it won all three U13 tournaments Harrow International School runs in a season - the Youth Cup, the Festival Cup and the International Cup. The same year the girls played their first international tournament, the Bangkok International Youth Soccer Festival, against sides from Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand. They finished fourth and took the Best Sportsmanship award home with them.
Ten players did that. A goalkeeper with reflexes and the flexibility to reach what she should not reach. A defender who became the most improved player in the squad and makes every forward work for the ball. Another defender nobody gets past, with the longest throw on the team. A player who has played every position on the pitch - goal, defence, midfield, attack - and looks happy in all of them. A left-footed specialist whose pass splits a defence and who has scored when it mattered. A defender nobody bypasses twice, with the right pass at the right moment. The tallest girl in the team, who hits the hardest shot and takes the free kicks. The youngest, fast on the ball and already the scorer of important goals. A forward so quick and so hard to dispossess that people have started making comparisons she will have to live with. And the captain, dangerous in front of goal, who takes the corners from both sides.
Behind them is a head coach who played professionally and clearly enjoys the job: he asks for discipline, and he shows the girls that with commitment nothing is out of reach.
