Aussie women’s football captain Sam Kerr has Indian roots | Football News – Times of India

The FIFA Women’s World Cup didn’t end the way Australia wanted it to. But finishing fourth — the co-hosts lost the third-place play-off 2-0 to Sweden on Saturday — is their best showing ever. What would endure in memory is the fierce long ranger that Matildas‘ captain Sam Kerrstruck against England in the semifinals. The Aussies lost that game too.But that piledriver, which synchronised power and precision, would have done Roberto Carlos proud.
Not many know that Kerr has strong Indian ties. The Australian football captain, who turns 30 next month, also harbours an intense desire to connect with the country her parents migrated from. Her Anglo-Indian father Roger was born in Kolkata; his father was English and mother Indian.
“I’ve been speaking to my family about ways I could help be a role model for young Indian girls. My family’s been in Australia for 40 years now and I still don’t know a whole lot about India. I’m really proud to be Indian and love my skin colour and love my ‘Indian complexion’, as my nana (grandfather) says,” Sam told BBC in Dec 2020.Born in Fremantle, Perth, Sam was the youngest of four siblings. As a child, she would just run around, kick balls or play cricket.
“As a kid I loved playing sports. It was my number one passion,” she says in her autobiography, ‘My Journey to the World Cup’.
The striker, with 64 international goals to her credit, is famous for her celebratory cartwheels and backflips. “I would spend my lunch time practising, flinging my body up and over in the air, freaking out my teachers and classmates, until I got it right,” she says.

In the BBC interview, Sam also spoke about the immigrant experience of her family. She said, “I’ve listened to my nana and my dad’s stories about moving to Australia, feeling like outsiders, having to work their way into society at a time when it wasn’t very multicultural, and it’s taught me a lot. It was hard for my dad to be accepted as a dark-skinned man in Australia. Listening to what they went through has really influenced who I am and taught me to accept people for who they are.”
Kerr is the first Australian woman footballer to be nominated for the Ballon d’Or Féminin.
The 5-feet-6-inch striker plays professional football with distinction for Chelsea. She is in a relationship with US footballer Kristie Mewis. She has 1.6 million followers on Instagram, many of them Indians.

(AI image)