‘I was kidnapped and left homeless – but football saved me'

Growing up in Nigeria, Comfort Etim, 37, always wanted to play football. But after coming to the UK, she was kidnapped for months, then abandoned to sleep rough. Now, thanks to The National Lottery and its players, she’s coaching a football team in Liverpool, where she lives with her two sons

As a young girl, I knew that football was in my blood. My mum had been a soldier who fought in the Nigerian Civil War, but she fell in love with football and became the country’s first accredited female coach.

I inherited that love from her. I ate and breathed the game. It was my escape. When there was no food, I would play football to distract myself from the hunger, and when I wanted to hang out with friends, it was to play football. It was my everything.

Though we both adored the game, Mum’s ambition for me was to finish my studies. But my parents couldn’t afford to send me to uni and I knew that I needed to get a job and start earning money. The only thing I could see myself doing was playing football, so I went professional, signing up for a second division team when I turned 16.

A year later, in 2003, I got the chance to go to England to spend four weeks training to be a coach at Loughborough University. I remember thinking, “This is the life I have always dreamed about.” But I didn’t have the means to stay in the United Kingdom, so I returned to Nigeria at the end of the course.

I’d only been home for a couple of weeks when I was approached by a scout. He said he wanted to take me to play soccer for an American college.

It was exactly what my mum had always wanted for me – the chance to play and study. Getting me there wouldn’t be cheap but she was determined, so she started selling all her belongings to pay for me to go. She gave everything she had.