Manchester City's Caroline Weir: 'I want to help girls carry on playing'
Caroline Weir has tried to make the most of the enforced break. “A real positive of lockdown is that players have had time to reflect, take a minute and think about what’s important. It has for me anyway,” the Manchester City forward says.
At 24, the Scotland international was playing some of her best football before the pandemic cut short the season. The focus of her career may have been on getting to the top but it had “always been in my head to give back. Now I feel I’m at the age where it is something I want to be more conscious of.”
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She has acted quickly. First by becoming the 150th player to sign up to Common Goal, the organisation that commits players to giving 1% of their incomes to sporting charities. Now she is to become a global ambassador for the innovative Girls United, which runs football programmes in south London and Bacalar, Mexico, but with the wider remit of giving girls the confidence to embrace opportunities off the pitch.
At a time when the grassroots game is in limbo and fragile, there has never been a more important time for players to help. “For me, growing up in Scotland, grassroots had such an important part to play in my career,” says the Dunfermline-born Weir.
“It’s where kids fall in love with football and it’s such an important time. I still remember playing with the boys at five all the way through to age 10 and going down on a Saturday morning to these big grassy muddy fields.”
Helping more girls enjoy football prompted the link-up with Girls United. “Lots of girls, especially teenagers, drop out of the game. I want to help highlight the many positive physical and social reasons for girls to carry on playing.”
It is also about more than that. “If they want to stay in football that’s great but if they want to do something else then they’ve built up a whole host of skills that can take them to wherever they want to be, no matter where you come from.”
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Studying for a degree in sports writing and broadcasting is balanced alongside the lockdown training provided by her club, FaceTiming family and Netflix, but it has “definitely been a challenge” for her, too. “I have felt like a 14-year-old girl again. I would only go out running and train with a ball by myself when I was younger.”
Weir is ready to play whenever and wherever but there is some relief the cancellation of the season has brought the “hardest part” – the “not knowing” and having to be constantly ready to move up a gear – to an end. “You had to train in certain ways and at a certain time because you didn’t know when you would be back,” she says.
The isolation has also made a core part of the women’s game feel all the more valuable: the relationship between players and fans, something professionalism and growth must not jeopardise. “We do have to make sure we keep a hold on what’s important to the women’s game and I think as long as you’ve got players who realise that stuff is important then I think it will be OK.”
By involving herself in causes that matter to her Weir has one eye beyond the game. Lockdown has “made me realise just how big a part football plays in my life and how much time is taken up by playing every single week,” she says.
“It’s made me think that whatever I go into has to give me a similar buzz and be something I enjoy. There won’t be a game day one day, so there has to be something similar that I’m working towards. But hopefully I’ve got a few years yet.”
