Baes FC: London’s New Language of Football

London’s East End is where Baes FC first kicked off, becoming a sanctuary for women and non-heteronormative players of Asian heritage. Formed in 2022 by artist Nicole Chui, the community now spans the Asian diaspora – Iranian, Indian, Pakistani, Thai, Filipino, Korean, Chinese, Nepalese, Vietnamese, Sri Lankan, Malaysian, and more – united by the shared act of reclaiming space in a sport that rarely made room for them.

Back when Chui first laced her boots in 2019, the local women’s football scene was growing fast, but the locker rooms and leagues were still overwhelmingly white. She’d spent years in changing rooms where she didn’t quite fit, learning that ‘inclusion’ in sport usually stopped at the photo op. Naturally, the next step was building what she couldn’t find: a team that felt like home. “I wanted to create a team that celebrated Pan-Asian identity in football after experiencing the lack of voices as both an amateur player and fan,” Chui tells Dazed MENA.

That founding impulse, to make space where there wasn’t any, became Baes FC’s heartbeat. In just three years, the football club has gone from a handful of players meeting in East London parks to a cultural force that’s recognised across the UK. Not only has it launched a new visual identity by designers Claudia Gemperle and Alina Sai, but also earned a nomination for its first award at Emirates Stadium and inspired new collectives like Homme FC and Rise United to form. “We hope to be part of the fabric celebrating the new wave of Southwest Asian voices and see more collaborations in the creative football scene carrying that same joy and togetherness.”

Football has long been dominated by rigid systems, but Baes FC has turned the pitch into creative commons—matches are followed by potluck dinners, someone has brought dumplings, someone else is filming on a camcorder. The field looks less like a match and more like a reunion, a patch of grass turned into a small, tight-knit community.

The team’s work happens as much online as on the pitch. Instagram, for example, doubles as an archive of muddy knees, home-cooked meals, and posters announcing kick-offs drawn by friends. You can see how much of this project is about staying visible in a game that rarely reflected them. “Too often, conversations about Asian representation get lumped into a monolith, but Baes FC aims to show that being Asian isn’t just one thing,” asserts Chui. “It contains multitudes and complexities.”

Everyone here volunteers. Everyone shows up because they want to. That effort – to keep something communal alive – is its own little act of defiance. Racism and discrimination still thread through British football, but Baes FC persists, building its own pitch instead of waiting to be invited onto someone else’s. “We’re already seeing more inclusive representation and authoritative voices emerging in UK grassroots women’s football,” adds Chui. “However, there is still so much to go when it comes to reshaping the industry.”

The next step is to launch a new kit, a way to keep the team self-sustained and independent, and open a path for fans to directly support its work. But even without the kit, the logos, and the awards, Baes FC has already altered what football can look like in London: slower, brighter, held together by care.