Meet GALS FC: the women putting fun into grassroots football
“It started with one kickabout in the park," says Nora Beqaj.
It was 2022 in post-lockdown London. Beqaj and Lorne Magill – former colleagues and now firm friends – felt they were missing a sense of community and purpose. That summer, England’s football team the Lionesses won the European Championships. Beqaj and Magill wondered if simply playing football might bring a similar sense of joy on a smaller patch of grass.
Not that either were particularly competitive or even that interested in the game. “Lorne had never played football before,” says Beqaj. "We didn't feel comfortable going to a football tryout, or going to play in a league.” And so, they invited a handful of friends to a park in north London. That first kickabout was so joyous that friends began inviting other friends. Soon, demand was so high, they had to get a waiting list.
Now, GALS FC have sprouted grassroots groups across the UK. So far, in 2026, there are 72 clubs across England, Wales and Scotland, including two groups in Edinburgh.
Women’s football hasn’t always had the freedom to grow like this. A little over a century ago, the Football Association, in its manly wisdom, made an infamous statement. ‘Football’, it said, was 'unsuitable for females'. A ban on women’s use of football grounds blocked progress for the women’s game and helped solidify the perception of football as a masculine pastime; a perception that endures even today. “It wasn't something that we were excluded from, but not something that we weren’t included in," says Beqaj.
Girls often get the message early that football isn’t for them, while boys are given a football as soon as they're old enough to walk. They continue with the ball at their feet in playgrounds and parks throughout childhood. Girls, meanwhile, are rarely passed the ball in the first place. After years of being overlooked and not invited to play it’s easy to mistake a lack of opportunity for a lack of enthusiasm.
Beqaj mentions a panel one of the GALS team was recently on. “One of the questions that came up was, ‘Why are women resistant to getting into football?’”
It’s a question loaded with the assumption that the problem is women’s resistance, instead of whether football has done enough to welcome women equally. “I would say women aren't resistant to getting into football. They aren't being talked to in a way that gets them excited about it. I felt like there was a space to do this, to put friendship and fun at the heart of something active. Football's an amazing vehicle to do that because at 7pm you could have never kicked a ball before, and by 8pm you've played a full session at GALS FC.”
GALS FC revolves around the idea that football is about play as much as performance. “I think it's just removing the pressure. It's hard to do something new as an adult, and it's also hard to feel good about something when there's pressure on it. I don't ever want someone leaving a GALS FC session feeling: 'I should have got that goal.' Or, ‘That wasn't a very good tackle that I did.’ That is so not the point. It's going from a typically pressure-filled environment to a playful environment. The kind that allows you to reconnect with fun and joy.”
She adds: “It's not that we don't believe there's no space for being competitive. People play with us [one evening] but then they might also play for a competitive team on a Tuesday.” Instead of referees GALS has ‘Vibe Protectors’ to gently remind players the kickabout is about fun: “It's amazing when people buy into the values of the club. And we've been very intentional about our values. It's very clear what we are about. Our t-shirts literally have ‘No Score’ written across them.”
A striking thing about GALS FC is perhaps that it asks ‘What is football about?’. The sport’s worldwide governing body, FIFA, is meant to protect and act as custodians of the beautiful game. Yet, FIFA lurch from one controversy to the next: creating and awarding a dubious peace prize to flatter Donald Trump; over turning on-pitch decisions due to political influence and attempting to make billions by taking commercial advantages of players and teams it doesn’t own. And that is just the last few months.
For all the noise about FIFA’s latest scandals, GALS reminds us that values of community are perhaps stronger in its grassroots than in football’s governing bodies. “There is definitely an element where people make friends at GALS FC. Then that extends to going to matches and travelling places together… We had a group that got together and played on a weekend, and we did a local derby with our five Yorkshire teams.” And she adds: “It also extends to a book club some of our Vibe Protectors run in London.”
GALS FC have a goal to be in every major town and city across the UK. By building a company around recreational football, the community hopes to grow without relying on funding from traditional football bodies. “We're a limited company, and we made that a deliberate choice. For example, we don't take funding from the FA because of our values. They don't allow trans women to play in women’s games that receive FA funding, so we've made a very deliberate choice not to take funding in that sense. But there is also space for a business for good that proves the commercial value of women’s recreational football. We believe in the way that we're doing it. And we've had over 2,000 women come play football with us for the first time. Something is going right.”
Find out more about GALS FC and your local group here.