"It was incredible and surreal when I got my jersey and the announcement came that I’d made it into the team. A large part of it was that my dreams as a 15-year-old were coming true,” says Bengaluru-based football and futsal player Mithila Ramani. The 28-year-old recently donned an India jersey for the first time to compete at the SAFF Women’s Futsal Championship against 7 South Asian countries and bring home the silver medal.
“I was always a sporty kid,” says Ramani, who currently plays football for the Bengaluru club Kemp FC, crediting the skills she picked up playing whenever and wherever she could as a child, with helping her adapt to futsal. “Growing up, we never had access to a turf, so I would play a lot of football on concrete or a hard mud ground, hence, it was easy for me to play on a hard, wooden, futsal court,” she says, pointing out, “What took me time to get used to is the intensity of futsal. While football is all about sustained energy for 90 minutes, here you play in bursts and you have to give your 100 per cent, doing a lot of sprints. In football, you have a lot more space and time to make decisions, but futsal demands making decisions in a split second.”
Although Ramani has her eye on the gold next year, the silver was definitely meaningful, since an injury took her out of the running for nationals last year. “When you end up missing key matches because of an injury, that feels like a very low point. Last year, it took me a while to come back from a massive leg fracture. It was one of my most difficult times. It’s always important to have people to talk to when going through setbacks like this,” she confesses.
Since the tournament, Ramani has switched back to football mode, currently training with her club for the Indian Women’s League 2 (IWL 2) set to start on March 20. Her day is hectic, starting early in the morning and going on well into the night, as she juggles a job in sports management and football. “During the IWL camps, we have two training sessions. I wake up at 5.30am for the morning session until 8am, work till 3pm and head to evening training. Then, I work some more before dinner.” She credits her club for support, saying that other players sometimes have it harder, “I know some have had to take up night shifts and found it difficult to balance both the club’s restrictions and work expectations.”
While men’s football has four national-level leagues, with the ISL at the top, women’s football has only the IWL (since 2016) and IWL 2 (since 2024). According to Ramani, things have improved for women in the game since Ramani moved from Chennai to Bengaluru six years ago to play in Karnataka’s relatively better-developed football scene, as she comments, “Karnataka currently has a three-tier women’s football state league. With so many leagues for women, there are tournaments happening almost every other weekend, independent ones too, just to provide women a platform to play. There’s also a culture of sports and football watching in the city which I’ve come to enjoy.”
With the last few years putting a spotlight on women’s sports in the country, especially with the women’s cricket team’s international success, Ramani is hopeful for better times for football too. Sharing her dream for the sport, she says, “A professional league running year-round where women footballers can be all-out professionals without having to rely on another job, where girls can grow playing football.” Here’s to hoping that these dreams are on their way to coming true.
What is Futsal?
Futsal is a 5v5, fast-paced indoor sport recognised by FIFA and the AFC. It is played with a smaller, low-bounce futsal ball on hard surfaces.