MeetAditi Chauhan. Former India goalkeeper and first woman to play in the English football league. Current job: World Cup TV expertSports was part of Aditi Chauhan’s DNA. Her father, then part of the Prime Minister’s Special Protection Group, played tennis, and her brother trained in taekwondo. She kicked and punched to a black belt in karate. Jackie Chan movies was a father-daughter favourite. Football wasn’t her preferred sport. Aditi relished basketball, a sport demanding razor-sharp hand-eye coordination, agility and fitness. Until her basketball coach spotting these talents suggested a radical change: go for under-19 Delhi trials as a goalkeeper. “I neither knew the rules nor the technique. But with luck, I was selected as a third choice keeper,” she says.Twenty years later, Aditi can look back at her resume with satisfaction. She has been India’s no 1 goalkeeper and the first Indian footballer to play in the English women’s league in 2015. The same year she was named Woman Footballer of the Year at the Asian Football Awards. She is the only female footballer on Zee5’s expert panel in the ongoing World Cup. “I enjoy the role and the responsibility of presenting a good imes for India.
Mentored by coach Ramesh Kumar Kanojia, her rise was sharp. By the time she was in Class XI in Saket’s Amity International, Aditi was a part of India’s under-19 team in 2009. Soon, she was playing for the senior side helping India win South Asian championships. She remembers blunting Nepal’s feared striker, Sabitra Bhandari “Samba” to win one of the games.Yet challenges loomed ahead. Football gave her joy, identity and a sense of self-hood. But a professional women’s league wasn’t even an idea then. Could football be a sustaining career in India? For someone who had graduated in commerce from Jesus and Mary College and already enrolled for a master’s at the prestigious SRCC, it was a difficult choice. “I wanted to do something that made me happy, kept me connected to sports,” she says.During a university team trip to New Zealand, Aditi found the answer: sports management. Enrolment at London’s Loughborough University in 2013 opened up new vistas. After completing MSc in sports management, the goalie was interning with Decathlon when she went for trials to Millwall, the south-east London football club. “But I was on a student’s visa and wasn’t eligible to play for first and second division clubs. Millwall was in the second tier then. But their goalkeeping coach liked me and suggested I should try West Ham,” she says. West Ham Ladies (now West Ham United Women) was in the third division then.The Chennai-born keeper got drafted. With EPL games telecast live, West Ham was a familiar club in India. The selection made news, brought her name to focus. “But it wasn’t a professional contract because I was on a student visa,” she points out.Life was a hard grind. After a day’s work at Decathlon, Aditi would ride a second-hand bicycle to the station and take a train to the Hammer’s Chadwell Heath ground. The effort and the training paid off. English club football would upgrade her skills, elevate her understanding of the game. “The standards at West Ham, even at Loughborough University, were far higher than what I had come across,” says the five feet six inches tall goalie.Everything changed suddenly. Deep into her second season in 2017, just before flying to India for the Asia Cup, Aditi rose to collect a corner kick in an away game and fell awkwardly. “The moment I tried to get up, I knew something was very wrong,” she remembers. It was an injury to Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL), a vital band of tissue that stabilizes the knee.“When the MRI report came, I locked myself in the room and cried for two days. It was the lowest point of my career,” she says.But Aditi steeled herself. Surgery and rehab followed in Delhi. She took 9 months to recover. “And I played for India again,” she says with a hint of pride. She also signed for an Iceland club, Hamar Hveragerdi, but sadly couldn’t play due to “visa issues.”Her comeback was cut short by a second ACL injury against Nepal in Chennai, 2022. She took two years to recover this time. “But I told myself, I have lived life on my own terms and I will retire on my own,” she says. Aditi retired in 2025, only after a great season with Kolkata-based club, Sribhumi FC, in Indian Women’s League.India has produced top-class women footballers in the past. Shanti Mullick and Shukla Dutta formed a lethal goal-machine pair spurring India’s second-place finish in Asian championship in 1980 and 1983. Classy midfielder Bembem Devi Oinam, the first to receive a Padma Shri, is another. Striker Sujata Kar and medio Alpana Seal could have played for TVS Crailsheim in second-division Bundesliga, but for AIFF’s visa bungle in 2000.In her own way, Aditi too is a trailblazer. She is also the founder of “She Kicks”, a “women-centric” football academy based out of Dwarka, where she first kicked the ball. “I feel it is my responsibility to make the journey easier for the next generation of girls. More girls should be playing football. It changes your personality completely in a positive way,” she believes.Aditi is optimistic about the future of women’s football in India. The Blue Tigresses currently stand at 69 in Fifa rankings; the men are listed at 138. “We have the talent and we have demonstrated our capabilities. But we must put systems in place. I believe the women’s team can play the World Cup before the men’s,” she says.
