Why do girls play football, and why does it matter?
A parent in Bangkok has plenty of options for two afternoons a week. This is the case for football, made by the people who run the club.
The question is a fair one. Football is not the obvious choice for a girl in this city, and almost nobody will suggest it to you. Lions FC Girls exists because of a simpler thing: in 2020 a father set up extra coaching for his daughter and her school friends, on top of the football they played at school.
Six years on the case is easier to make, because we have watched what it does - not to future professionals, but to ordinary girls who turn up on a Monday and a Thursday.
Confidence that was earned, not handed over
On the pitch a girl has to decide for herself, quickly, in front of everybody, and then live with the decision. Pass it or carry it. Step in or hold. Nobody can make that call for her, and a coach shouting from the touchline is already too late. She gets it wrong, the game carries on, and two minutes later she has to decide again.
That is a rare thing for a child to get to practise. Most of the week is spent being told what to do next. An hour of football is an hour of real judgement with real consequences and no lasting damage - and the confidence that comes out of that cannot be talked into someone afterwards.
A team where every place belongs to them
Football cannot be played alone or won alone. Every player matters to the result, which means every player is missed when she is not there. Girls work out quickly that a team runs on listening to each other, covering for each other and chasing something together. And because this club is for girls, no position is already taken: the striker, the captain, the goalkeeper organising the defence - all of them are girls, every session.
Properly active, twice a week
Running, turning, sprinting, stopping, and doing it again for an hour. It builds stamina, coordination, balance and strength in a way that good intentions about exercise never do. In a city where keeping a child genuinely active is hard, two fixed hours a week in the diary are worth a great deal.
Discipline that shows up elsewhere
Turning up when it is hot. Running the drill again because the first go was not good enough. Losing, and coming back on Thursday. These are ordinary demands, and girls who meet them twice a week tend to meet them at school as well. Several of the girls who train here have been named MVP in their school teams - not for anything they won with us, but for what they bring to their own side.
A second circle of friends
This one matters more than most parents expect. Our players come from schools all over Bangkok, so the team is made of people a girl would never otherwise have met: a different school, often a different year, often a different country. Over the years girls at the club have spoken Thai, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German and Swedish between them, and they translate for each other without being asked.
If something is difficult at school, here is a group of people who know nothing about it. That is not a small thing to have at twelve.
What this is not
It is not a production line for professional players, and nobody here will tell you your daughter could go far in order to keep you enrolled. The job of the club is to teach her to play properly and to make the hour worth coming back for.
It is not a competition team either. The girls play their matches for their own school sides, and what they learn here goes back into those games. Lions FC is the extra activity - the coaching, the second circle of friends, and the room to find out what she is capable of.
Come and watch one
An hour beside the pitch will tell you more than anything written here. Monday or Thursday, 17:00 to 18:00, at SoccerPro Bangna in Bang Na. The first session is free and no experience is needed to come to it.
