The Big Interview: Kassandra Missipo
25-year-old Belgium international has had a tough journey to the top. She talks about fighting discrimination, overcoming serious injury and the future of women's football in Belgium.
Half an hour with Belgium international Kassandra Missipo is interesting and insightful. She is reflective, yet wants to look forward. She’s punchy, yet also reserved and humble about her journey, but most of all, she wants to be a footballer for the little girl who once only held the dream.
The 25-year-old isn’t doing bad at living it out for real. She is fast approaching her 50th senior cap for the Red Flames and is coming off the back of representing her country at a major tournament, yet she admits there is so much more she wants to achieve, and that she has had to tailor her dreams compared to those of six-year-old Kassandra growing up in an apartment which overlooked a football pitch, the first football pitch she would ever step on.
It's not been easy journey. Born to a Belgian mother and Cameroonian father, Missipo has experienced discrimination throughout her life and career and is a fierce campaigner, running an Instagram page called ‘Empowerment Loading’ and encourages people to speak about against hatred.
“It is more than football, it’s always been more than football. It is not just a sport, it is connecting with each other…”
As she says later in our interview, she a firm believer in “love wins”, but also that while she wants to use her voice to help others, she also wants to be known as a footballer first and foremost.
“I started really early, I don’t remember a time without a ball,” says Missipo, as she prepares to face England at the Arnold Clark Cup on Wednesday. “I was born in Asse. I don’t think you will know it, but it’s near Brussels. That pitch was always outside my window and I always said to mum ‘I want to play’.
“She bought me a little ball and a little goal, but we lived in an apartment so I made a lot of noise and broke some things! We went to the team who played on the field outside and they told my mum I had a lot of talent.”
Missipo was only five at the time and rules stipulated she couldn’t play games for the team until she was six, so for one year she just trained with her new team and eventually went on to play at school, playing with boys until she was 17 years old.
The midfielder describes herself as a “Pitbull” on the pitch and admits that playing with boys who were physical until she moved into an all-female environment has contributed to her style of play on the pitch.
“They supported me. It was just natural, they appreciated my talent. I think how I play comes from playing with the boys. They would make jokes, but I showed I was not just a girl, I was a football player doing what I loved.
“Football was my life. My idol was Ronaldinho, I had a really nice picture of him in my room, I even imagined I’d play with him, not knowing there were so many things between us. I was just a kid. That was the dream though and it kept me going, you dream about all different things.
“When I was 19 I was in England with the national team and we went for a tour at Manchester City. I could see women’s football was big and it gave me the dream to play in England one day. You have to dream because it keeps you going. I haven’t reached where I want to be at all, but I’m loving the process to it.”
The ‘process’ is something Missipo speaks about a lot, because she has been through a lot, a lot that has made her more appreciative of what she does have.
She was dropped from the Euro 2017 squad for disciplinary reasons and almost missed her second chance through an ACL injury, but the tournament being delayed a year due to COVID-19 offered her a reprieve.
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