Gurinder Chadha
Sognando Beckham

Monday, 18th July 2022:

The women's national football team exits the qualification matches for the quarter-finals of the European Championship in England, defeated 1-0 by Belgium.

Two matches earlier, they had been defeated by France 5-1. Three years ago in the World Cup, they were beaten by the Netherlands in a match 4-1.

The last two national teams mentioned had the advantage not only of having stronger girls but also more beautiful ones.

Just over 25 years ago, my passion for football was such that I created a virtual championship among the various classes of the middle school I attended, complete with a stopwatch, imagining how the matches unfolded, making one or the other team win, according to the whim of the moment.

Sometimes I organized tournaments or matches among the female or male components of the same classes and used to do radio commentary on my father's Walkman.

In the years of Play(station) 1 with the various 'Fifa,' I personalized the teams with names and values, finding particular enjoyment when I used girls' names (from the high school I attended and the middle school) (in the last version of 'Fifa' - 2001 - with an all-female Atalanta team, I won the Champions League final, 'Professional' level, 1-0 against Chelsea).

Having abandoned the passion for club football in the 2002-2003 school year, 'Dreaming of Beckham' was released in theaters, the story of an Indian girl (Jess) with talent and a passion for football who must challenge the beliefs and traditions of the community where she grew up in an area south of London, noticed and introduced to a female team by a girl who saw her at the park and who would soon become her friend (Jules), until obtaining permission to fly to America to train in a professional women's team.

'From dream to reality' it is nice to see that in almost 20 years girls are gaining equal recognition in the same almost always male-dominated playing field: when I saw the comedy about two young girls eager to break into the world of football (with actress Parminder Nagra, born in 1976, already quite grown-up then in a film for teenagers against Keira Knightley not even twenty years old), I never imagined that one day that 'dream' would become reality.

A great credit to Kenyan-born Indian director Gurinder Chadha for having directed a choral film that excites and entertains from beginning to end, a fairy tale where the hero...the heroine must overcome many trials before asserting herself.

In an interview, Gurinder Chadha explained that this film told the story of 21st-century girls eager to affirm their dreams and the need to fight to the end to fulfill them.

If what I've seen in our girls is evident, I don't know, but I do know that what my eyes have witnessed isn’t a 'clapperboard,' but the referee's whistle marking the start of reality...