A football coach from Waltham Forest has been named both National and Regional Female Grassroots Football Coach of the Year at the FA Grassroots Football Awards, held at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff.
Sara Fahad, 27, coaches under-16s at Ryan FC, Aldersbrook Rangers and Leyton Orient's emerging talent centre. For her, the award matters most for what it signals to the children she works with week in, week out.
"It's going to be normal [for boys to see women in the game] because all their life that is what they've seen, and they respect it," she said.
That normality has not come easily. Fahad has faced discrimination as a Muslim woman in a coaching world still dominated by men, and after England Football announced her award she was met with negative comments.
"I'm a female and a Muslim, and there's millions of us in the country," she said.
Her route into the game started at the age of seven, playing street football at local cages. Hopes of a professional playing career faded, but she completed her FA Level 1 course at 16 and has now been coaching for 11 years, earning degrees in sports science and in human and applied physiology along the way.
She is currently working towards her UEFA B qualification and has been accepted onto the Mentee Development Programme, which supports coaches from underrepresented backgrounds. Her ambition is to coach at professional level, including in the Premier League.
