We are the champions

In the wake of the World Cup, Nikesh reflects on the beauty of the game and what he’s learned from coaching his daughters’ football team

Hope Is Around The Corner 31st July, 2026

Nikesh Shukla

The World Cup may not have come home, but what did come home was a renewed sense of purpose for my daughters’ football team. As I watched the tournament with my kids, my youngest kept reminding me that the England women’s football team is better than the men’s. For her, the main difference between the men’s game and the women’s game is the theatrics of a foul on a bloke: while a male player may spin for eternity like a rolling pin sucked out of an airlock into the freezing emptiness of space, when a woman goes down, chances are she’s actually hurt. 

Over the last year or so, I’ve been an assistant coach of my daughters’ football team. I’ve tried my best to be fair and not be one of those competitive dads who lets the scoreline run their emotions. Before a tournament a few months ago, as the team huddled for our tactics talk, I thought it’d be a good idea to play Queen’s ‘We Are The Champions’ off my phone and get the team to sing along.

“This is so cringe,” one of them said, while another put her fingers in her ears in horror.

Even my daughter, who had indulged my enthusiasm at breakfast, started to back away from me. It was a bad idea. I didn’t try it again multiple times that season. I promise you I didn’t. Why don’t you believe me?

Here’s a few things I learned from helping out with the coaching. Everyone on the team, and the coaching staff, understood why I had to miss eight or so Saturday morning training sessions so I could join protests against the far right. Those tedious idiots really ruined a lot of Saturdays. (They’re planning to ruin 8^th August with more racism, so get yourselves down there, so I can attend training.)

Another thing I learned: It isn’t my job to scream and shout from the touchline until we win. It’s my job to point out the things the kids are getting right as well as reminding them of their positions, tactics, where the ball should go and where they should be on the pitch. You have to praise the things they’re getting right during the game so they feel seen. A bit like how we workshop things in my creative writing classes at University of Bristol, where I lecture. The framing for feedback is ‘What’s working? What needs attention?’ and that’s the way I want to coach.

At the beginning, I struggled with the overriding feeling of wanting the kids to win matches. Sure, they were there to have fun, but there was something in me that wanted them to dominate, to crush the other side. And that’s just not what it’s about. It’s about confidence and feeling like you’re part of something bigger than yourself. 

When people discover that I play football two or three times a week, I often tell them that it’s one of the few things I do that forces me to be present, to be part of a team. I have to play my part, concentrate and not think about work, otherwise I might not be in position or let a goal in. And you know what? It makes me smile. Even when I’m cross, with my performance, or with the scoreline, I’m still having a great time. It turns out I don’t have to always obsess about work. 

Since my kids started playing football, we’ve watched the team double, even triple in size, with more girls from across the area joining. It’s inspiring. As the team swells —and we hope that the scouts start coming to watch, so our retirement plans can be activated (I jest, I jest!) —I’m grateful that I’ve had a chance to watch my kids play and be involved in their development, watch their confidence grow, watch their sense of teamwork become more embodied. They got so good that they managed to fire in a couple of bangers, hit those top bins, poach a couple of goal-line stealers and celebrate with each other.

I’ve always had a funny relationship with football. One of my first jobs out of university in 2002 was working on an anti-racism project for a then-Premiere League football club. I saw some messed up things in those three years. I experienced a lot of racism, violence spilled on to the streets, and I lost hope in the game. 

Three things pulled me back towards it. One was the Stadio Football podcast, presented by my brilliant friend Musa Okwonga, who speaks about football like poetry, without the tribalism, only an appreciation of the beauty of the sport. The second was playing with the other dads on Thursdays and Sundays at my local leisure centre. And the third was helping coach my daughters’ football team. Because whether their team contains the next Alessia Russo or Chloe Kelly, what they have is a cringey dad, in a band t-shirt most likely, belting out ‘We Are The Champions’ to a concerned group of twenty kids, like legends of this game will be told at Zeus’ table.

Speaking of Greek mythology, go watch The Odyssey! It’s amazing. My dear friend, and The Good Immigrant contributor, Himesh Patel, who plays Eurylochus, Odysseus’ second-in-command, should be higher up that cast list for the amount of screentime he has. He’s the heart and soul of the film, and I’m proud of him.

Also, we’re bringing the ten year anniversary tour of The Good Immigrant to Bristol in September. Go get tickets! Oh, and see you in Queens Square on 8 August, so we can protest the far right. 

No column from me next month. I’ll be busy filming my TV show and working on some other book deadlines (I’m writing a book about Bristol, more on that soon!) and somewhere in there, taking a holiday. This was a bitty final paragraph. But as we approach a year of this column, dear city I live in, let’s keep working together, pushing for hope. So many people in Bristol are doing incredible things and what this city stands for is progressive and exciting. That is our project. Let’s keep going!