Brazilian blind footballer: “I want to be the voice for these girls”

There is a memory from her childhood that Geisa Farini has never forgotten. She is playing football with some boys and girls in the schoolyard. Because the children all have visual impairments, they wrapped the ball in a plastic bag so they could see it. Suddenly the young Brazilian girl hears parents shouting from the edge of the schoolyard: “The girls look like lesbians, like boys!” Geisa Farini is so disturbed that she tells her mother everything. But the parents from the schoolyard had already complained to the director about the girls kicking – with success.

The school for the blind forbids the girls from playing football. They aren't even allowed to kick the ball during halftime. This isn't a joke from the distant past. Geisa Farini is now 38 years old. And yet she still became a blind footballer.

Today Geisa Farini is a national team player and is better known than most male blind footballers. She is followed by over 200,000 people on Instagram alone. There she shows, for example, how blind people shop, find the right bus or work on the computer. And how they play football. “I use my own life to teach people to understand people with disabilities,” she said in a 2024 interview with anthropologist Wagner Xavier de Camargo.

Farini does many sports, including half marathons - and, since 2022, her great love for blind football. She thinks how crazy it is to only discover love at the age of 34. Because there were always such big hurdles. "Structural machismo permeates all parts of society. Machismo is also deeply rooted in the black community, the LGBT community and among people with disabilities." Anyone who is discriminated against is not immune from being discriminated against. When Geisa Farini starts blind football in 2022, she will be one of the pioneers in Brazil.

In the country of Marta and Pelé, this is hard to imagine. But in fact, the more popular a sport is among men, the more patriarchy excludes women. Blind football has been played in Brazil since the 1950s. The sport was developed here, and today men can even become professionals here. For women, on the other hand, there was one of the longest football bans in the world in Brazil, from 1941 to 1979. Before that, there had been a lively women's football scene.

It wasn't until 2009 that the first blind football project for women came along, but it soon failed due to lack of money and sexism. Things didn't really get going for visually impaired women until 2022. There is still no league. Geisa Farini says a big problem today is excessive protectiveness towards women with disabilities. "The families are afraid that something could happen to them while playing sports. I see this less with men."

And so Geisa Farini is above all a woman who dreams of being among the first. She would like to be part of a first round of championships, or the first Paralympic women's blind football. But that doesn't exist yet. Professional sport is so important for women with disabilities, says Geisa Farini. To have your own income, to learn independence, to get to places you wouldn't otherwise be able to go. But she has already successfully fought for progress: a national team was founded in 2025. At the World Cup in India, the Brazilians reached the semi-finals.

As so often, Geisa Farini finds good words for such successes. “If you grow up in a family that clips your wings, sport can help you spread your wings again.” And so the Brazilian also made videos from India, in front of hundreds of thousands on her channels. “I want to be the voice these girls need.” She herself has spread her wings widely.