Sulanjana Raul’s fight to belong on Asian Football’s toughest stage

There are footballers who arrive with a plan. And then there are those who arrive with nothing but instinct and a stubborn refusal to disappear.

Sulanjana Raul belongs to the latter.

“I didn’t know how to survive,” she says, almost matter-of-factly, when she talks about her early days in Kolkata. 

“I had to face many problems… how to survive,” says the 18-year-old. The city that has built and broken footballers in equal measure did not welcome her with open arms. It demanded something first, resilience, adaptability, silence when words failed.

She doesn’t dress it up. There is no attempt to romanticise the struggle.

Just a quiet admission of what it takes to move, from a village in West Bengal, from fields where she played without expectation, into a system that demands clarity, confidence, and belonging.

“In the beginning, I didn’t have any plan to play football,” she told The Bridge in an exclusive conversation. “But my father used to play… I would go with him, watch him, run alongside him. Slowly, I started liking it.”

That is how it begins. Not with ambition. Not with structure.

Just proximity. And persistence.

Learning to belong

The hardest transitions in football are rarely tactical.

They are personal.

“When I came from my village… I didn’t know anything about what I should do,” Sulanjana says. “Even in the India camp, it was difficult in the beginning… how to survive there.”

There is a pause when she speaks about language.

“I still face some language problems… I cannot express myself properly,” she says. “But it is getting better now.”

It is a small sentence. But it carries the weight of dressing rooms, team meetings, instructions half-understood, and the slow, daily work of finding your voice.

Now, she says, things are different.

“I understand what is happening around me. I am comfortable. Everything is on track.”

A team that believes — even now

India’s results in the AFC U-20 Women's Asian Cup have been unforgiving.

A 6-0 loss to Japan. A 5-0 defeat to Australia.

But inside the camp, Raul insists, the feeling is different.

There is no denial of the challenge ahead, only a refusal to let it define them.

“We are working very hard every day,” she says. “As a team, our mindset is to give our best and achieve something new.”

And when asked about targets, the answer doesn’t change.

“Our coach always tells us… we don’t know what will happen,” she says. “But whatever happens, we have to give our best. If we give our best, everything will be good.”

Qualification itself had already shifted something.

“Qualifying after such a long time feels amazing,” Raul says. “We can feel the energy from the crowd… we will try our best to take this journey further.”

It had been 20 years.

For a generation of players, including Raul, it wasn’t just a milestone. It was an opening, a chance to measure themselves against levels they had only watched from afar.

Raising her own standard

At club level, Sulanjana Raul has already moved ahead of her age.

An Indian Women’s League title.

A SAFF Women’s Club Championship.

Continental minutes in the AFC Women’s Champions League.

And a scoring record at East Bengal that keeps stretching, 49 goals and counting.

But even those milestones are treated as starting points.

“That was a very good time for me,” she says of her early breakthrough. “But now the level has increased a lot.”

So her response is simple.

“I want to give not just 100 percent… but 200 or 300 percent,” she says. “I want to contribute as much as possible to my team.”

And when she looks for inspiration, she looks towards endurance.

“Sunil Chhetri is very hardworking… he can run for 90 minutes,” she says. “I want to build that stamina… to run like that for the full match.”

Her goals, for now, are direct.

“My aim is to perform well here,” Raul says. “So that I can go to the senior national camp. I want to play for the senior India team.”

There is no attempt to project too far ahead. No sweeping statements about legacy or impact.

Just the next step. And maybe that is what defines her story more than anything else.

Not the goals. Not the results. Not even the setbacks.

But the ability to stay.

From a village where football was an accident…

To a city where survival came first…

To an Indian camp where she had to learn, slowly, how to belong.

India’s campaign hangs in the balance heading into their final group game.

Sulanjana Raul’s journey does not.

It is still moving, quietly, steadily, in the only direction she has ever known.

Forward.

This interview with Sulanjana Raul was conducted prior to the start of India’s AFC U-20 Women’s Asian Cup 2026 campaign.