Sabiha Jamal: Pride and joy

Finding players’ super strengths

Jamal’s unusual experience as a player has shaped the way she approaches working with players now, encouraging them to explore and expand their super strengths. She delights in the memories of the liberation and authenticity of the football she and her friends played as youngsters, without a coach restricting them.

“Because you weren’t coached, it was a little bit more raw. You’d see something on TV and then everybody was attempting to do it the next day. There was a little bit more freedom in the way that you played. I feel like now everything’s being coached. Everything has to be done a certain way. What is it that you bring, what is it that you enjoy doing?”

And now as a coach herself, she says that you need to know the players you’re working with in order to get the best out of them. Her own coaching is based on creating strong relationships and good communication with her group.

“Before I even had any of that football knowledge or the confidence and the coaching detail that I was giving out, it was all about the relationships I had with the players, and I found quite quickly that they bought into me, they bought into what I was like with the energy or being encouraging, being positive, finding games that they enjoyed,” she says, adding that having that good relationship with players means she also got a little leeway from them when she wanted to try out new things with them.

“I thought I’d hit the jackpot by being able to do that on the side and then play in the evenings and compete”

And it had an unexpected flip side as well – they also became more comfortable to try out
new things of their own, knowing that they would not be judged or criticised for it.

“I found really quickly that the environment that I was creating, they were quite happy to do exactly the same thing where they could make mistakes and knew that I was going to be okay with it. So that’s something that I’ve really kept with me even up until now because I still think, regardless of the technical and the tactical and the detail that you’re trying to get at, you still need to have that environment where everyone’s on the same page, you are enjoying yourself when you play.

“You’ve got an environment where everyone’s trying to push each other to be the best to want to win – but you can do it in a place that’s quite safe to make those mistakes, but also to say, ‘You’ve got to be better on the next one, and that’s okay here.’”

Creating a career in the women’s game

Jamal previously coached at West Ham United and is involved with the England youth set-up alongside her role at Tottenham, where her players have the ambition to become part of Martin Ho’s first-team squad. She says that players in the under-19 age group are looking to step into senior football and apply the knowledge they gained in the academy – but as in men’s football, the percentage of youth graduates going straight into the first team is low. However, there are more opportunities now for young female players to carve out a career in the professional game, with paid roles at clubs outside the top flight if they opt to move on, or potentially as a dual-registered player gaining experience at another team.

“You can be professional at tier three, you can be in a really good set-up that’s pushing for promotion and suddenly you’re in the WSL2,” she says. “You’ve actually got way more opportunity.

“Fundamentally, you always want every single player to progress right the way through and be in the first team, but the reality is that at a lot of clubs, that just doesn’t happen. What you try to do is prepare them as best as you can in order for them to go out and be able to compete in the women’s game.”

She explains: “We spend a lot of time, because we’re fortunate enough to do it, on individual player development, because you’ve got to look at where does a player end up long term - and that could be positionally. ‘Okay, so if it’s positionally, where do we need to make them better? Do they have a super strength? How do we make that even better?’ Then we can work on some of the weaknesses.

“There are so many other things, so many technical basics that consistently just have to be able to be done. Can you play off both feet? How do you make a player fit into the women’s game as seamlessly as you can?

“Yes, we play a certain way at Spurs. So tactically we’ve got our own focus, but there’s so many things you can account for individuals. One of my biggest ones  has been building resilience, building character, because I think things like that are so important, to be able to manage when things are going well, and when things aren’t.

“You come back to things that aren’t very different to when you’re coaching at grassroots, when you’re trying to develop people as well as players.”

And that mindset also means that she’s less fixated on selecting just one position for a player than other coaches might be – encouraging a flexibility that helps the player develop in their preferred spot, and also gives them an element of versatility that could prove incredibly valuable in their future career.

“Fundamentally, you always want every single player to progress right the way through and be in the first team, but the reality is that at a lot of clubs, that just doesn’t happen."

“I’ve started to have really honest conversations with a lot of players: ‘You might just end up playing here. Give it a go. And then guess what? If it’s wrong, I’ll take the hit. I’ll happily take the hit, but I want to try this out.’

“And sometimes you might just need to play out of position, and having that in your locker and having that mentality of going, ‘Okay, I’ll just play that role without being like a deer in headlights’ [is important]. I’ve seen it in earlier age groups where parents panic and they go, ‘Why are you putting my kid in that position?’

“Just let them play football.”

The importance of representation

And that sheer joy in football is something she wants to continue to foster and encourage in the young people she coaches. Outside of her work in elite environments, she has also been part of Goals 4 Girls, a football development charity based in East London giving girls the opportunity to experience the game. Goals 4 Girls’ mission is not about creating a pipeline of talent to the elite game, but empowering girls to enjoy physical activity and being part of a team, breaking down social and cultural barriers.

“Not every single girl that got that came in to play football was going to go off and make it pro, or had the ambition to make it pro,” Jamal says, “but what we were able to do is create a development centre.

“When they told me they had a development centre, I was like, ‘This is exactly what I wished I had as a kid, that I could just show up, play, but I get academy level coaching now.’

“Then if we were able to find them a club to play at, whether it was grassroots, whether it was an academy trial, wherever we thought their level was, they’d go in there less intimidated.

“I had a couple who ended up going out to trial at Charlton, going out to trial at West Ham as well. Then you had the others who were just like, ‘I love it here and I just want to be able to come and play football once, twice a week.’ It was a way of providing something a little bit more sustainable in the women’s game.”

And Jamal got the chance to be a visible role model for these girls that she would have welcomed in her younger years – and not just in her playing days.

“When they told me they had a development centre, I was like, ‘This is exactly what I wished I had as a kid, that I could just show up, play, but I get academy level coaching now.’"

“That visual representation, I didn’t realise how important it was till I did that work within Goals 4 Girls,” she says. “When I first started coaching, it was all boys. There were no female coaches.

“Suddenly you are facing all sorts of like cultural views: ‘Will they accept me? I’m the only female coach here and, now your kid is now in my group. How does that make you feel?’ And it’s difficult because sometimes I go, ‘Oh, is that in my head? Do other people [not] care so much?’ But you can’t help but think that way.”

It has motivated her to operate at her highest possible level throughout her career in football – and to encourage other women and others from a similar background to her.

“Whatever football environment it is, in whatever role I have,” she says, “I want to be able to open it up to as many people as I can.”