From playing football with her brothers at the age of four to competing in the home of the Matildas, Shalika Aurelia is proving that Indonesian women's football can hold its own on the international stage.
Indonesian female footballer Shalika Aurelia is now playing for UWA-Nedlands Football Club in the National Premier Leagues Western Australia (NPL WA). Australia is widely regarded as one of the world's leading nations in women's football, and joining a league there was a golden opportunity she could not pass up, she said.
Getting to Australia took Shalika across several countries. She began her international career by joining several academies in England at sixteen, before signing her first professional contract with Roma Calcio Femminile in Italy at eighteen, she said.
After representing DKI Jakarta at the National Sports Week (PON), she moved on to Makati FC in the Philippines and then Kelana United FC in Malaysia, she said. It was also during her time at the Italian club that she faced the Matildas in a match, she added.
At NPLWA, Shalika said, she’s one of only three foreign players a team is allowed to field. As a non-Australian player, Shalika feels a particular pressure to perform at her best in every training session and every match, she added.
Throughout her moves from country to country, Shalika has never stopped studying, she said. She has completed her undergraduate degree and is now planning to pursue a master's, she said. The reality of women's football means players need to build a foundation beyond what they can do on the pitch, Shalika added.
Listen to the full SBS Indonesian conversation with Shalika Aurelia to find out how she first fell in love with football at age four, what it was really like stepping into the competitive world of Australian football, and what she hopes for the future of women's football in Indonesia.
