The blind woman who teaches the Prime Minister to see. The story of Samantha Gough

There are those Saturday mornings spent on the sidelines cheering on Dad Steven’s football team. Or the afternoons spent with her brothers, who from the very start taught little Sam the basics of that sport, football, which is deeply rooted in the soul and tradition of their Scottish culture – so much so that the word ‘sport’ when used in connection with football feels reductive. There was also the Saturday morning trial for the local team in Lasswade, a small town south of Edinburgh, and that first ‘no’, one of many in her life: ‘They told me I was too blind to play football. It was devastating; even at school they’d excluded me from sport. Becoming a footballer was my dream; I had two paths: to become the driving force behind positive change, or to hide in the shadows’. She chose the former, driven by her family’s love of football and by the desire to turn that void into an opportunity. Captain of the Leonesse, the English women’s blind football team, she now travels throughout the UK as a consultant to Premier League clubs, where she runs specialised courses to improve communication between teammates and their perception of sounds and the playing area. Meet Samantha Gough.

Vision problems from birth: “My parents realised early on that I had a condition – a central visual impairment where the eyes function correctly, but the brain is unable to decode the signals it receives. As a child, it wasn’t so severe; I could distinguish shapes and colours, but as I grew up I lost most of my sight and today I can only perceive light and dark.” Sport has been fundamental: “It saved my life. There’s nothing more extraordinary than the freedom to express myself to the full and prove to myself what I was capable of.” Even during those difficult times, when she faced bullying at school, her determination and mindset prevailed – qualities that went on to make her one of the world’s finest female footballers: “Little Sam would have liked to give up so many times, but in the end, you just need to find that spark, that love for something, to keep going. I dream of a world where young people, even those with disabilities, can try out lots of sports and find the one they truly love.” For her, it was football.

That whoosh you hear in the silence of the match, describing the sound of the ball as it vanishes into the air after being kicked. Or the softer thud against the net, as if in slow motion: “There’s no better feeling. As someone with a visual impairment, sounds are amplified. I love the adrenaline and the physicality of the game.” Her introduction to blind football came almost by chance when, in 2021, the FA (Football Association), the English football governing body, decided to invest in a project to establish a women’s national football team for blind players: “It was the start of an incredible journey, filled with fantastic people and intense emotions.” Her first international competition was right here in Italy at the 2022 European Championships: “I remember going into the changing room and seeing the captain’s armband on top of my shorts, but at first I didn’t quite realise what it was. I still cry when I think back to those words: ‘Sam, you’ll be the captain of the national team’.”

There have been many sporting successes in recent years: “We’re a really close-knit group; we communicate well.” It is precisely this latter factor – communication – that has caught the attention of Premier League teams, with Arsenal being one of the first: “The results of recent years have shown how useful our techniques are even for players without disabilities, especially at the start of the season.” The first focus is precisely on creating a better level of communication and interaction: “Even a simple exercise such as passing the ball in a circle becomes very constructive when wearing a blindfold. This is where communication, through key words or sounds, becomes essential. If they manage to learn this concept and make it a natural routine, they will also gain an advantage in terms of speed during matches”. The focus then shifts to the sound of the ball and so-called echolocation: “We all have blind spots. Learning to recognise the sound of the ball clearly, particularly in relation to space, allows you to instantly gauge distance as well.”

And then there is a third point, which is, in a way, a combination of the previous ones: “The best skill anyone can acquire is the ability to distinguish and isolate individual sounds, such as the voices of teammates, the manager, opponents, supporters or the ball itself. Our brain cannot analyse them all at once; you have to be able to pick out the most effective one on the spot – this, too, is a skill that needs to be trained.” Essential exercises that complement the fundamentals of football, as explained by Paul Iyobo, a mainstay of our national team and considered one of the world’s finest strikers: “The greatest difficulty is auditory overstimulation, which often becomes mental overstimulation as well. It’s important to learn to filter all the information reaching the brain whilst trying to control the ball.” And then there’s the spatial component, which is intertwined with the communicative one: “Having a mental map of the pitch helps a great deal in managing your body and the sounds around you. Here too, during training, we do exercises focused on spatial awareness. There is also a more specific aspect concerning communication with teammates and sensing where our teammates are positioned; this helps us understand whether they are in the immediate vicinity or on the other side of the pitch, and, of course, to sense the opponent’s movements so that we can decide on our next move as quickly as possible.”

These are worlds that often seem worlds apart, but as Sam’s example shows, they perhaps have more in common than one might think. Because, ultimately, they are underpinned by the finest values of sport. Thus, between a match with the Leonesse and her commitments with Premier League teams, Sam returns to the school benches—the very place where she was once denied the chance to play—so that other young Sams are never denied that right again. Always remembering those Saturday-morning dreams.