Striker Soumya: Telangana’s new face in Indian women’s football
HYDERABAD: As Hyderabad prepares for the arrival of Lionel Messi on December 13, the city’s only current India international footballer, Guguloth Soumya, will be far away taking the field for East Bengal in the SAFF Club Championship beginning Friday in Kathmandu.
Soumya, a fan of Cristiano Ronaldo, said Messi’s visit would significantly boost football’s growth in Telangana. “Though I am a big fan of Ronaldo, I like watching Messi’s games as well. The way he guided his team to World Cup victory in Doha was sensational,” she said.
Soumya will miss the high-profile tour, where chief minister Revanth Reddy plans to showcase local talent. For the 23-year-old right winger, it will instead be a return to Kathmandu’s Dasarath Stadium where she and her India U-14 teammates experienced the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that killed 9,000 people a decade ago. She suffered an eye injury at the time. “It was traumatic for all of us,” she recalled.
Early resistance at home
Her father, Guguloth Gopi, said the family tried to dissuade her from continuing in the sport after the Nepal incident. “We all hugged her and cried and decided against allowing her to play football,” he told TOI.
But her childhood coach, Gottipati Nagaraj, a physical education teacher, convinced the family. “She had bursts of speed, which are essential in football. Her parents were strictly against it, but the senior girls at the academy and I encouraged her to join,” he said.
Soumya said her parents eventually relented. Her performances in School Games Federation events secured her place in the India U-14 team, followed by U-16 and U-19 stints, before her senior India debut in 2021.
European stint and IWL breakthrough
Soumya played four matches for ZNK Dinamo Zagreb in Croatia in 2022–23 and scored in the pre-quarterfinals of the Croatian Women’s Football Cup. “It was a different experience and took my game to another level,” she said.
She won the All India Football Federation’s Best Player award, which she considers her most cherished achievement so far. The Nizamabad forward finished as the third-highest scorer in the Indian Women’s League last season, and her goal against defending champions Odisha FC in the penultimate match helped East Bengal clinch the title.
“I want to score more goals for my country,” she added.
