More Than A Film: Team Mexico - Mónica Sánchez
|Mónica Sánchez represented Mexico at the Homeless World Cup in Mexico City in 2018 and was part of the Mexican team in The Beautiful Game Image: Rebecca Corbett
Meet Mexico’s legendary goal keeper - Mónica Sánchez
More than a Film: This series explores the real players and management teams at the heart of The Homeless World Cup, the tournament is the inspiration for the feature film, The Beautiful Game. In the film Mónica Sánchez represented Mexico.
The women’s team from Mexico are legends at the Homeless World Cup, they’ve taken the title more than any other teams (eight at the time of writing). Mónica Sánchez trained for five years before being selected for the Homeless World Cup. We caught up with her while she was in Rome filming for ‘The Beautiful Game’.
Mónica represented Mexico at the Homeless World Cup in Mexico City in 2018. She delighted the home crowds with her spectacular saves, which ultimately helped them to the title for a record sixth time. The team are still reigning champions.
But life for Mónica wasn’t always trophies and representing her country. Growing up in mountainous Chiapas in Southern Mexico was hard for Mónica and her brothers and sisters. Her father left while she was a child, leaving her mother to raise five children alone.
Then her brother died, and her mother became severely depressed.
“During the period when my mum became depressed, we were basically left to fend for ourselves.”
At fifteen, her older brother became the main breadwinner for the family and Mónica, aged ten, had to look after her and her six-year-old sister. Her eldest sister, who was eighteen, got married and left the family home.
Her mum moved in with one of her sisters who lived four hours away and Mónica and her brother and younger sister moved in with their aunt.
“We lived all over the place, we lived in our aunt’s house, or in her other house. We didn’t have a stable home. Our cousins used to pick fights with us. They saw we didn’t have anyone, and they left us out of everything they did.
“I looked after my sister a lot because she was younger, and she was the one who got hit the most. You know, kids fight a lot. We pretty much spent our time playing in the park. I liked playing football at the time, so I took her to play with me there.”
Finding solace on the football pitch, Mónica and her sister were able to get away from their cousins.
“In the mornings we went to school, then we would come home, eat, and go to the park. That was our life whilst my mum was recovering.”
During this time Mónica’s mum was so ill she barely recognised her own children.
“She was afraid of everything. Afraid of eating, of showering.”
It took her mother three years to recover, for most of the time she was living four hours away from Mónica and her brother and sister. They only saw her occasionally. By the time she recovered, Mónica was already in secondary school.
Aged fourteen Monica was offered a state scholarship to play football in the capital of Chiapas, Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Alongside playing football, the organisation would support her to go to school. As the family were struggling with money and couldn’t afford for her to continue her education, Mónica decided to go.
She played there until she was sixteen. This was the longest the state would fund her.
“When they kicked me out of where I lived, I didn’t have anywhere to go. I didn’t even know where to go, what to do.
“I went to live with this lady whose team I played for. She told me that I could stay for a while whilst I looked for a job and did something to get back on my feet, because I had nothing.”
During this time, her mum had started to sell bread and vegetables on the street, but she still didn’t have enough money to pay for her medicine, so Mónica needed to try and support her.
“I started working and I wanted to continue my studies, but I didn’t have the time or experience in other jobs. It was a difficult time because I met people who led me astray. I was really stressed, not knowing what to do. My mum was ill at the time and each of my siblings were doing their own things with their families. I felt like I had to help my mum.
“I met a group of people who drank a lot. They invited me to play football, but it was more drinking than playing, because they didn’t see it as a sport but as an excuse to go drinking.
“I pushed sport to one side. I was a football coach after leaving college, I trained the girls who were younger than me. But during this period, I stopped doing it because they wouldn’t employ me, and I couldn’t find a good job wherever I looked. I wanted to continue studying but I met this group of friends and that’s when I started to go off the rails.”
In 2012, she met the team behind tournament ‘De la Calle a La Cancha’ (From the street to the pitch) and began to see a way out.
“I got very excited and really wanted to start living and playing football again. When I made it to the tournament, it was as if this desire to be myself had come back.
The desire to help other people through football, and to be an example for them and to show them that they can be like me or be better.”
But it didn’t all go to plan. After three years Mónica still hadn’t been chosen for the team to play at the Homeless World Cup. She started to give up, she didn’t want to play anymore.
During her fourth year of being involved in the team she stopped training so hard, physically she wasn’t in the best shape but her approach to the game changed.
“It wasn’t about me playing anymore, it was about the fact that now I played in a team. I played whilst helping and supporting everyone else.”
Her changed attitude didn’t go unnoticed.
“I feel like this helped me get a spot on the team. When they called me for the interview, they do in the selection process I was so nervous. I had no idea what they were going to ask me, I felt like my heart was going to stop.”
Chiapas is twelve hours by bus to Mexico City where the interviews were taking place. When the organisers asked Mónica if she could get there she just said yes.
“I said yes to everything, even though I had nothing, and I didn’t know how I was going to do it.”
When it came to the team announcement, she was even more nervous.
“When they called my name, I couldn’t believe it. I was there and I still didn’t believe it. It was amazing.
“I had a goal to not only take part in the tournament, but to show everyone who knew me, the girls I used to train, that if I want something, I can get it. If I have a dream, I can achieve it.”
There was an additional bonus of being selected for the team, Mónica was also awarded a sports scholarship to finish university.
But sadly, it wasn’t all good news for Mónica. In 2017 there was a severe earthquake in Mexico and her mother’s house collapsed.
“We lost everything. We never received any help. My mum had no idea what to do, or even how to cover the holes when it was raining. We lived like this for a year. It was really awful because we didn’t have a way to rebuild.”
After being selected to play for Mexico at the Homeless World Cup, Mónica alongside the Mexican team were invited to an event fun by the Telmex Foundation, the Mexican team’s main sponsor.
A male player and a female player had been chosen to speak, but last minute the female player got cold feet. Everyone else decided Mónica would be the perfect person to fill her shoes.
She didn’t particularly want to, but she gave in because she thought only a few people would be listening.
Walking onto the stage, she realised it was a bigger audience than she had anticipated.
“I turned around and there were so many people. The National Auditorium was full. I think my heart stopped for a second.”
After getting over the initial shock, she heard her name being introduced with a short description of her life, her battles with alcohol addiction and her family’s struggles.
Before Mónica had a chance to speak, the director of TelMex told Monica in front of the audience, “I’m going to give you your house back.”
He then asked the audience, ‘Should we give her a house? Should we build her a house?”
They cheered, and started chanting “build her a house, build her a house”.
In a remarkable turn of fate, Monica was not only going to represent her country at the Homeless World Cup, but was going to return to a new house for her mum and her family.
With this in mind, being on set in Rome for The Beautiful Game might even be one of the less surreal things to happen to the determined girl from Chiapas. Mónica has certainly shown anyone who doubted her, that if she has a dream, she will make sure it comes true.
Our Mexican partner is Street Soccer Mexico A.C. find out more about their programme.
Words: Rebecca Corbett