The British woman who plays walking football for Spain

Walking football has really taken off on the Costa del Sol and indeed elsewhere in Spain, so much so that the Walking Football Cup of Nations is to be held in Alicante this October. The competition is now in its second year having taken place for the first time in England in 2024.

Nicki Bracey will be playing for Team Spain women’s team during the competition, having already played with them at an international level last year. Nicki, 47, has been described by fellow walking football player Mark Sylvester as “one of the best female players in Andalucía”.

She’s been playing football for over 20 years since she took it up in her early 20s in the UK. She explains that she didn’t have the chance to play at school, like many girls of her generation: “It’s one of my biggest resentments. Girls and boys were separated for PE and we only played netball and hockey,” she recalls.

Nicki soon fell in love with the sport and although she moved around the UKa lot with her job as a prison officer, she would always get involved with a team wherever she was living.

When Nicki moved to Malaga around seven years ago to work at a treatment centre for people with addictions in the Axarquía, one of the first things she did was to find a team.

At first she played “running football” with a team in Arroyo de la Miel, but during the Covid pandemic she moved to the Axarquía which is when she discovered the walking version. “I moved to Benamargosa during Covid and heard about the Aston Viñuela walking football team,” she explains, adding that while walking football wasn’t her preference it was “better than nothing”.

Although Aston Viñuela has since folded, Nicki has been involved with other teams in Benamargosa, Cómpeta, Nerja and Torrox.

Last year she got a call from Mark Coleman who she’d met while playing in Arroyo de la Miel. Mark is one of the founders of Team Spain and he asked if she’d be interested in getting involved in the women’s team.

Nicki jumped at the chance and last year alone they travelled to Morocco, France and Thailand to compete. She says the team is largely made up of British players who live in Spain and Spanish women from a team in Seville.

Of the trip to Bangkok last December, Nicki recalls, “My flight was delayed and I was delivered onto the pitch by a motorbike taxi with my suitcase. I got changed and started playing.”

Since then she has mainly played with the team in Torrox and says that while at national level the teams are split into men’s and women’s, she’s often the only female player in a mixed and very international group locally.

Nicki had been playing with a team in Benamargosa until the pitch was flooded during the storm that affected much of the village in November last year. “The football pitch was completely ruined,” she says.

Now the focus is on training for the next international fixtures: another trip to Morocco - this time Casablanca - in April, and the World Nations Cup in October.