PLAYER PICK is an ongoing blog series we’ve created to be able to highlight different sports team players, and talk one-on-one with them to hear about their story and athletic experience. Here, we sit down with 24 year old Professional Football Player, Karishma Ali, from Chitral, Pakistan.
Karishma Ali is not like your average football player who has had all of the luxuries that the majority of athletes usually have growing up. Her road to professional football has been anything but easy. She grew up in Chitral, the northern part of Pakistan up in the mountains in an extremely conservative society where women were unequal on every level. Continue reading to see how she broke through the toughest of barriers to become the inspiring player and activist that she is today.
No opportunities, but a lot of love for football
When speaking with Karishma, she expresses multiple times how she plays football for the love of the game. Unfortunately, there was and still isn’t a lot of opportunity for football in Pakistan as people don't take an interest there in women's sports and also many events aren't organised for women.
We asked Karishma how she was able to get into football in the first place given the limitations she faced in Chitral. She starts off by saying, “When you grow up in a society like that, you have two options. There’s no real ‘in between’. So you either accept it, that lifestyle, or you’re someone like me who since I was a kid, I was a crazy kid, was just not okay with how women were being treated as second class citizens.” Karishma lived in a world where womens’ opinions were nonexistent, even in the house. Luckily those rules didn’t really apply to her own household and that’s what kickstarted her to think differently and fight for what was right in her heart.
She continues setting the scene, “In a lot of houses women are just left out from decision-making, even with intervening in conversations - that’s just something women don’t do here. They just belong in the kitchen. And that stuck in my head since I was a kid and I didn’t like the concept of that.”
Karishma’s father is and was a crazy football fan. As he would watch matches on TV, he would explain how the game is played to Karishma, which sparked her interest. At the time it was never mentioned to her that in Pakistan in general, football is only for men, or that the concept of women in sport was unheard of. On top of that, there were of course no opportunities for her to join a football team as a kid, as there was no concept for women playing sports in general. These barriers only piqued her curiosity and she continued to play for years inside her house.
To uncover more of what her environment was like at the time, we asked Karishma what would have happened if she rebelled and went outside in public to play football. She responded, “My mom and dad would definitely not be mad. They would love that. But in general, people would be staring at me. Even today, there will be men that come up to me if they see me playing and they’ll be like ‘Don’t do this. This is not a part of our culture. You’re destroying our culture.’ This is something very normal even though things are so much better now.”
Education and going professional
After 8th grade, Karishma moved to Islambad, the capital city in Pakistan for her higher education. Her first task when arriving at school was looking for a football program and whether girls were allowed to play. When she found out this was the case, she was so pleasantly surprised and was immediately sold on attending that school.
When she joined, you could either find Karishma in class or on the football grounds. Those were the only two things she would spend her time doing: studying and playing football. She just loved it. As she started playing in the schools’ tournaments, other local academies and clubs would attend and see her play and began asking her to join them for training.
She happily began this additional training and her skills developed from there. In 2016, she was able to participate in some national games in Dubai, where her team won a silver medal.
Comparing her experience of playing in the capital compared to her hometown, she shares, “Pakistan is so diverse. So, in the city it’s normal for girls to play football, even though there are still rules, like you have to reach the grounds and then change and change back again before you travel home. But still, it’s okay for girls to play football.”
Very proud of her, Karishma’s dad was always supportive of her dedication and drive for the game. But he would always warn her in making sure to avoid letting anyone in their hometown find out that she was playing football. He encouraged her to continue playing in the city, but out of caution to prevent anyone back at home knowing she plays.
No one from Karishma’s hometown found out about her football activities until she made the national team in Dubai, which was a life changing moment for her.
Make or break moments
When the news got out about Karishma’s football success, she received a ton of extremely harsh backlash. There was a Facebook post about it from her community back home with the headline stating how Karishma was the first girl in Chitral, Pakistan to play professional football. One morning Karishma woke up to a thousand notifications with not a single good comment. Vicious messages varied from things like “shame on her” to “her legs should be chopped off” and “we should destroy her before she destroys the culture”. As a 17 year old girl, she had to deal with this tremendous feeling of terror and anxiety, not only for herself, but for her family as well. All because she was playing a game that she loved.
Getting more into it, she discusses, “Honour is such a big thing in our culture for women. I could play football and destroy the name of my family. So this burden we carry on our shoulders throughout our lives, thank God I just threw it off at that time. My father was like ‘You know what, you need to go ahead because the thing is, if you stop today they will never let anyone else go there again.’ So you have to keep fighting and make them understand that they cannot stop you. That's our constitutional right. And because a lot of girls aren’t educated, they don’t know. So it was a very dark time for me at the time but I am truly grateful for that moment because it started shaping who I am now. I rebelled and was like, ‘Say whatever you want, I’m going to keep playing football.’”
Starting a movement for the girls of Pakistan
Karishma continued playing football, but wanted to do something bigger for her community and make a massive impact on the women in Pakistan through sport. In 2018, Karishma launched the Chitral Womens Sports Club, which wasn’t just a club, but a movement. The club started off as a football camp to enable the young girls (ages 8-15) of Chitral to get active and play football.
“It was a whole movement where we stood up and told our society that it is our right to play football. It’s our right to fight for our lives and make our own decisions.” shares Karishma. As expected, this drove even more hate towards her because of the way she was changing the culture. It became a whole political situation where people would meet in her hometown to vote against her activity. This just gave her more power and made her realise how powerful she is. She thought, “You know what, I’m not alone anymore. All these girls are here too and you can’t stop all of us.”
Despite the mass amounts of hate and resistance she received, she mentions there were also lots of really good people in her community. It was those good people that started to support Karishma and helped sustain her project.
At first, no one wanted to fund this club. Karishma started by collecting donations from friends and family to get the club running. Because of the nature of their environment, they still couldn’t just practise freely anywhere in public. They had to find a remote place with high walls and no visibility so men wouldn’t be around to see.
And because they couldn’t afford transport, they all had to walk two hours to reach this playing ground area up in the mountains with no people around. Karishma adds, “I thought the next day the number would decrease because of the long walk, but it just kept increasing. More and more girls were showing up. Their love for sport is what keeps me going.”
Four years later they are still hosting these camps every year. While it’s still hard for them to get funds, they have more support now than ever. They’ve also added other sports to the program including skiing, volleyball and cricket. They also now involve the mothers, as a way to get them involved in something they haven’t been about to do before. It’s this whole idea of mothers supporting their daughters and Karishma attests that it’s an amazing thing to witness.
More freedom of expression for women
In 2019, Karishma also started up The Handicraft Center. She wanted to continue her work in creating more positive futures for women, while also putting her business degree to use. At The Handicraft Center, women would come and work on what they’re best at in Pakistan, which is embroidery. It simultaneously acted as a safe space for them to just simply be and express themselves. Karishma shares, “Women laughing out loud is almost equal to crying in our culture. No one does that.” So, at this center, women can freely express themselves, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
It started off small but over the years the group was able to collaborate with an Italian designer and even go to the Milan Fashion Week, which Karishma was over the moon about to be able to experience.
Work hard, play hard
Fast forward to today, we asked Karishma what her training regime and playtime look like. She shares, “I think I’m one of the few girls in Pakistan that is always training, always playing football, and always in the gym.”
Every morning she wakes up at 6am, and if she’s not training or at the gym, then she’s doing some stretching at home before starting her work. Karishma just loves to stay fit and on her A-game.
She does mostly 1-1 trainings with her coach or plays with her guy friends, as there’s been issues with their federation restricting team practices. In Pakistan, they don’t have the high professional setup of a team where they get paid, so Karishma and her friends typically make up their own team, most recently playing for Highlanders FC.
Last year in March they reached the semi finals and she’s looking forward to playing again this June. In effort to continue to build up professional female athletes in Pakistan, Karishma remains training a large group of girls in her club in the hopes that one day they can play in the nationals.
Creating a better future
We spoke to Karishma at length about what she plans to achieve in the short and long term. She definitely sees herself continuing to play football and coach the younger girls of Pakistan for the foreseeable future.
Speaking more ‘bigger picture’ she says, “I want to be successful. I’ve already done a lot but I want to show even more to the people that judge girls that it is possible for women to win and become bosses. I want to be able to impact the lives of as many girls as I can through sports. My life is so beautiful I want to be able to give that back to as many girls as I can.”
For now Karishma wants to stay in Pakistan because they don’t really have a big football team and the concept is still pretty new, requiring a lot of Karishma’s attention. She does 90% of the work. While of course she has so many opportunities to go abroad, she’s sacrificing that to stay put so she can help create a better life for the girls in Pakistan. They look up to her. “They’re waiting for me to do something.” she says. Once her work in football for the girls in Pakistan becomes more sustainable, she plans to travel and move around.
We ended on an aspiring note, asking Karishma what advice she would give to a young girl following in her footsteps. She shares, “Don’t make any decisions based on your current situation. If you’re going through a hard time, your life must be so miserable. But just look ahead. Think 5-6 years ahead and think that ‘If I just persist right now, I can create a beautiful life for myself’. And it’s just so important to believe in yourself.”
Karishma will continue to fight for women in sport and her story is an inspiration to all of us. Continue to follow and support the work she’s doing for girls in football. You can check her out on social media here!
