My journey so far

My name is Nathania, I am 12 years old and I am a crazy football fan and aspire to be a professional player one day. I started playing football at the age of 3 just by kicking a ball around on the lawn outside my house. I then started to play with my brother and father at home and eventually with friends at school. One thing led to another and I soon discovered a huge amount of love for the sport. I started taking my passion seriously when I was 8. Those summer holidays, just before starting my 5th standard, I went for a football camp that was being held near my home in Kotagiri (a small town near Ooty, in Tamil Nadu). I thoroughly enjoyed those two weeks and could feel that I was improving my game. Soon, I started following football seriously by watching lots of matches and looking at different statistics about matches. That was when I found Messi, who is now and always will be my idol. Ever since, I have become a huge fan of both him and FC Barcelona and I now have 20 scrap books filled with his pictures. I enjoy watching late

I joined Dravid Padukone centre for sports excellence in June of 2019. Since joining the academy, I feel like a completely different person, especially in terms of football. I have improved as a player and my game sense has developed greatly. In the first few months I took some time to adapt to the place, the coaching staff and the players. Now I feel like I am part of a big joint family. I should add that the academy really welcomed me, being a girl, to join the academy with open arms. The academy placed me for high performance training with boys U13 after the trial. In August and September, we played a league in KSFA, Karnataka state football association. Our club played 9 games in which I played 4 or 5 games, I also managed to score a goal and managed 2 assists. I was also one of the only girls to play in the league.  I would like to talk about a person who changed my style of football and all my characteristics: my coach, Petros Sideris! Petors Sideris is from Greece and a former centre back for the Greek club Olympiacos. Coach has tremendously improved me from