Twenty years later and on verge of hosting Euros, south Asian players celebrate film and what it meant for the sport
When Yasmin Hussain was a child growing up in Manchester in the 1990s, she was football mad. At first she played the sport with boys, but when she turned 13 her parents told her she needed to find a women’s team to continue. The problem was, there wasn’t one.
At that time, women’s football was a niche sport rarely depicted on screen. When Bend It Like Beckham came out in 2002 – telling the story of Jesminder and her battle to play football against the wishes of her parents – Hussain was left thinking: “She’s lucky, she had a team to join. I didn’t have one.”
