Manchester City's Caroline Weir: I want to help girls carry on playing
The Manchester City forward and Girls United ambassador hopes to highlight the game’s physical and social benefits. She has tried to make the most of the enforced break. “A real positive of lockdown is that players have had a bit of time to reflect and take a minute, without thinking about the game at the weekend or the next training session, and think about what’s important. It has for me anyway,” she says.
At 24, the Scotland international was playing some of the best football of her life before the Covid-19 pandemic cut short the season. But while the focus of her playing career may have been on getting to the top it had “always been in my head to give back. Now I feel like I’m at the age where it is something I want to be more conscious of.”
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 being unveiled as a global ambassador for the innovative Girls United, which runs football programmes for girls in south London and Bacalar, Mexico, but with the wider remit of empowering girls with the confidence to embrace opportunities off the pitch.