Aston Villa job feels right and I hope it helps other women into leading roles | Eni Aluko

Villa’s women are going places and guiding them to the WSL in the city where I fell in love with football is an exciting challenge

Next week it will be two months since my last game of football, and in that time my life has changed significantly. I have left Juventus and moved home to London from Turin. I have announced my retirement, and this week I joined Aston Villa as their sporting director for women’s football. It’s a full-circle moment for me: I grew up playing football in Birmingham and now I will start the next phase of my career in the city where I met the game.

I always had a niggling feeling that this was going to be my last season in football. When I was first approached by Villa I was still at Juventus, and I thought it was something I would consider at the end of the campaign in Italy. But the more I thought about it the more excited I became, and in the end I felt my decision was between a role that can launch me into a second career on the executive side of football that might last for a decade or more, and at best another one- or two-year playing contract with Juventus or another club. In many ways, this opportunity pushed me into making the decision to retire.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/36gn43G
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