The Backroom Staff - Footballer: Kaylan Williams

Footballer: Kaylan Williams

Risks, resilience and life as a professional player

Today, Kaylan Williams is one of the Russian Superleague’s top strikers and the top scorer at Dynamo Moscow - but her journey has been anything but straightforward.

From a neuroscience degree in New Hampshire to dropping out of a master’s program just three weeks in, Kaylan has made bold, spontaneous choices that have taken her first to Israel, and eventually to Russia. Her willingness to take risks and bet on herself, often without a clear roadmap, is inspiring and shows a lot about the drive and mentality required to succeed at a high level.

In this interview, Kaylan opens up about navigating vague contracts and shady agents, training in lockdown during COVID, adjusting to new cultures, and what it's really like as a professional footballer.

The interview has been condensed and lightly edited for grammar and clarity. 

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[ Background ]

I'm from Indiana. I have a big family. I have 3 older sisters and my mom has 4 brothers and my dad has 4 sisters, so we're a very big family! My dad always said, ‘do something that you can wake up with a smile on your face’. My sisters are all older than me, so I got to watch them and we all went in crazy directions. My oldest sister is a chef in Florida, my second sister is a professional dancer in LA - she also does film and photography - and my third sister is a singer, also in LA, and then I’m in Russia, so we’re all over the place!

Growing up I did swimming, track and of course, soccer. Going to university, I was basically trying to find every option for scholarships both for academics and sports, but you can definitely get more money scholarships-wise with sports!

I ended up at the University of New Hampshire and played soccer and studied neuroscience. That was kind of my first experience with soccer being a ‘job’ and at the same time, I had school of course and other jobs as well. Still, university was a lot of fun. I graduated with a degree in neuroscience and behaviour and was figuring out what I wanted to do. Did I want to go to med school or do a PhD? There are so many different options and honestly, I had no idea.

I was also part of this program called McNair Scholars - for first generation college students - and could apply for a scholarship through them to do my own research, which I did during my last years in college. This helped me understand a little about what I wanted to do next. I thought about an MD, PhD because it’s a paid program - but it’s 8 years long! Long story short, my MCAT was okay but I wanted a better score to apply to a few different schools, so I decided to get a master’s degree in clinical psychology instead.

I thought, I’d just start my route like a normal person, you know - go to college, get a job, start life but the next step started and, well, I realized it’s a little boring and I was missing some adventure.

In the end, I was only enrolled (in the master’s degree) for 3 weeks! I had maybe 7 or 8 classmates and they were like 45 and asking me what I was doing there, telling me to go live my life!

People had been messaging me about going to Belarus to play, or going to Israel and play. I thought it was kind of a scam at first but eventually my college coach called me and told me it’s legit and there was a team that wanted me. I had just started school and moved all my things but I said, ‘alright, I’ll chat with them’ - within a week, I was on a flight to Tel Aviv.

[ Do you know how these agents, or the clubs themselves, found you or scouted you? ]

I don't know if they were scouting me honestly. But somehow, this agent, Vadim, from Uzbekistan ended up reaching out to my college coach to get a hold of me. He’d been messaging me on Instagram, on Facebook and even on LinkedIn but I thought something felt sketchy about it and just ignored all the messages! After I spoke with my college coach, he told me he’s an agent based out of Uzbekistan and has players going in and out of Israeli and Russian clubs.

So Vadim called me about Belarus. And I literally just looked up Belarus on Google and was like no, it looks cold! He’s like, ‘what about Israel?’ - I saw the beach and well, it looked beautiful, so I said why not?

I didn’t know what I was getting myself into but I saw they had another American girl there, so I thought, I can at least talk to one person. In the end, I think there were 4 of us from the US and one from Canada - and we all lived together in one apartment.

[ It sounds like you didn’t have too many expectations, how was your first experience in professional football? ]

It was different! It was during COVID and maybe two weeks after we arrived, they went into lockdown again in Israel. It was really weird because the season was on pause and training sessions were being shut down. We were doing this ‘home training’ stuff where they’d send us some YouTube videos to follow - we were like, ‘is this real life?’

I also didn’t know much about Israel and I came so quickly that I didn’t have time to do any research. Things like Shabbat, when on Friday evening everything shuts down - so if you forgot to grab food for the next day by 4pm, you’re just going to be kinda hungry! There were lots of little things like that.

The football was just odd, again, I had no expectations and I was there during quarantine - just in my apartment doing workouts. We’d go out for walks but our neighbors called the police and we weren’t allowed to go outside anymore! Someone from the club started then to bring us food. I basically flew across the world for lockdown. Still, I was like, whatever - I can get an experience, hopefully show myself well and see what happens. I think I’d only signed until January or May.

[ Next, you ended up in Russia with Lokomotiv Moscow, how did you find this opportunity? Was it through the same agent? ]

Yeah, so that was still Vadim. He called and asked what I thought about Moscow! I had already flown home from Israel, I think it was in January, and I was trying to figure out my next steps. It was strange and new - and I didn’t know many other players or friends with this experience to give me some advice. In the end, I said, sure. Honestly, it was pretty similar to the Israel experience at first. I just knew I had a ticket to Moscow and the club is called Lokomotiv - at least that’s what it says on the contract, but at that point, I didn’t believe anything on the contract! I was just hoping to play and see some things and hopefully, it would be exciting, that was basically my mentality.

[ What is the visa process as a player? Does the club sort everything out or do you have to go to the embassy, etc and apply? ]

In Israel, I didn’t need a visa to go there but once I was there, the club took me somewhere to get a visa. For Russia, it’s really different - I’ve already had to get so many visas for this country!

The first time though, I flew to New York to the consulate. I didn’t know at the time but when you step foot in there, it feels like you’re in Russia. There’s a guy at the door, he doesn’t speak English and just starts speaking at me, I just showed him the paper and tried to explain that I’m here for this. After they let me in, you go through security and have to leave your phone locked up. Anyway, there were some minor problems and I had to leave, get my phone and call my agent and the club. They figured it out and the next day I went back and they put the visa in my passport.

Still, this was just a tourist visa, I couldn’t get my work visa there. After I was in Russia for maybe a month or so, they flew me down to Istanbul to the embassy to get the work visa. The club just told me one evening that I had to fly to Istanbul and the flight was the next morning at 6am! Eventually, after a couple days in Istanbul, I got my passport back, with the visa!

[ What were your first impressions when you arrived in Moscow with Lokomotiv? ]

First of all, the weather was a complete 180. In Israel, the beach was ~5 kilometers from the apartment and we were running or riding bikes there and the weather was really beautiful. When I got to Moscow, there was crazy snow, up to my knees!

But I understood immediately that it seemed way more professional than in Israel. The training was very intense. I was supposed to arrive in Türkiye with them for preseason but because I didn’t have the right visa yet, I was still home (in the US) trying to train by myself. Because of the situation in Israel with the training, the last time I had been really fit was almost 7 or 8 months before going there at the end of my college season. So, I was definitely not fit enough for a professional level when I arrived at Loko.

I arrived only a week or so before the start of the season and the head coach, she set me straight - I felt like I was going to pass out at training! They were running so much, it was crazy.

No one spoke English either, not the head coach or any of the players, except one of the players, she played at Syracuse for a little bit and would speak a little English with me but she was in and out of the team, so I was on my own a lot of the time. The culture in the team was very different. In Israel, the players wanted to try to talk, or dance and sing in the locker room, here it was the exact opposite. I’d walk in every morning with a big smile and I remember, I tried to speak with one girl and she just said, ‘English, no’ and that was it, she just turned her head away like I was invisible. Everybody had this straight face, no smiles and I couldn’t understand anything!

On my second day of training, I rolled my ankle and had to go see the club doctor. He gave me some kind of compression thing that I’d never seen before in my life, it felt like some wizardry because he was very serious and just repeated, ‘three hours, no more’. I was like okay, I don’t know what this is but we’ll try it out!

[ Is there a big divide between the Russian players and the foreign players? ]

When I first arrived, I felt there was. I felt like they viewed me as someone coming to take somebody's spot. That’s the vibe I felt.

There was one other foreigner, she was from Brazil. I had taken a little bit of Portuguese in high school - I’m talking like maybe 8 weeks - so at least we could try to communicate with each other. She had also arrived a little bit late like me, so we’d have extra running after training for almost an hour. The problem with the team was, they could only start to eat lunch if the entire team was there - and of course, we were delaying them. It felt surreal, like why would they bring us here if they didn’t care that we didn’t understand anything - and then get mad at us for not understanding?

The running was crazy because we didn’t understand how much we were supposed to run! That was the biggest thing, running without knowing how many more are left. Plus, it was often snowing and my teammate from Brazil, she wasn’t used to this. Then once you finish, all the girls are like, ‘you guys are taking too long’ while they’ve already showered, got into their cars and driven to lunch. We were just on our own.

Still, week after week and month after month, we started to get it - although the running didn’t stop. I still don’t know why. Eventually, my Brazilian teammate had enough and left, she went back to Brazil.

[ Is there any kind of support like language classes or something like this? ]

No, at least not back then. Now, at Loko, they have a translator and she speaks Portuguese, English and Chinese, it’s great!

But back in that first season, we’d have film sessions for example and I’d just sit there for 45 minutes just guessing what they were talking about. Pretty much immediately, I decided I’d just have to start learning some words. I downloaded Duolingo and bought a Russian book (that didn’t help!) and started learning word by word.

The girls in the team, of course, tried to mess with me - they only taught me cuss words! If you say cuss words on the field, you have to pay a fine, so that was amazing…

We had a goalkeeper from Belarus who had also played in Israel and we would sometimes try to say a few words with each other in Hebrew. I think you can tell who’s been abroad and who hasn’t. The players who’ve been abroad to I don’t know, the States or around Europe, they’ve experienced being a foreigner and those are the teammates that would try to help - even small things like explaining a drill in training or playing some English music in the locker room made a big difference.

[ Still, on the field, it seems like it was pretty successful? Lokomotiv won a league and cup double. ]

Yeah, we won everything. But, I didn't play much. I was really just riding behind this top forward. That was another thing I didn’t really understand, why bring me here when you have literally the star forward of the entire league? I think she set a record for number of goals that season!

And there was this thing with weight as well. So, you should be very thin here - like you get on a scale every day before training! Every day they checked blood pressure and weight - okay, blood pressure, sure that’s fine but weight, it definitely fluctuates, especially within women.

I think in June, my first season, the head coach sat down with me - and we basically never spoke. She pulls out her phone and shows me this video of her cat. I’m like, ‘okay?’ Then she translates something basically saying I’m fat. If I lose 3kg, I can play in the next game this week.

I didn’t go by kilograms at the time but that felt like a lot! But I decided whatever, I literally bought a gym pass that day and I was doing all this extra work, running and boxing and sitting in the sauna. Anyway, I lost the weight but I didn’t have any energy. Still, I started playing a little bit more, usually as a sub for the last 10 or 15 minutes for a while.

So they were very successful in that first year but I wasn’t necessarily a part of the process.

[ Now at Dynamo, you’re a key player, how did you end up there? (was it through the same agent?) ]

I love Dynamo! It was not Vadim’s work this time… I’m figuring out, not just in Russia but in women’s football in general - perhaps it’s the same on the men’s side - it’s literally about who you know. It’s not just about being super good, everything is about who you know.

I had only signed a 1 year contract with Loko and, given how the year went for me, I wanted to leave after the season. Then, in the last game of the season, the coach played me as a center back - a position I’ve never played in my life - and told me she wanted to develop me in this position. I thought about it but ultimately, I wanted to play and have a chance to show myself and not leave on a bad note.

I decided to come back for a second year at Loko. For the next 6 months, I was playing regularly at center back, starting and playing fine in my new position. I was loving it. Then after 6 months, she just took me out without explaining anything to me. So, then I decided, okay, this is my last year here. There were still some negotiations at the end of the season but I decided it can’t work and I started to pack up my entire apartment. I think about 10 of the girls left the club that year.

One of the girls had a meeting with Dynamo and told me my name came up and she gave my number to the director of the women’s club there. Anyway, he called me right away. I had all my things packed and was flying out in a couple of days. He said, ‘well, how about we send a car, you come out and see the base?’

Honestly, I didn’t have time to go to the base, I was running around Moscow, trying to buy dollars and dropping clothes and things off at friends’ houses. I had in my mind, to try a new country, a new culture.

So, I was home debating everything, I thought I was going to go to Japan, I had even started learning Japanese! But I was still talking with the director at Dynamo and realized, I felt like I had some unfinished business - I didn’t get to show myself in the first year and the second year, I played half the year in a new position. Let me go back and give a good showing in the Super League (the top league in Russia).

I decided to come back. And I’m happy I did. Dynamo was a brand new team coming together for the Super League, positions weren’t fixed and everyone had a chance to show themselves and we could grow as a team.

The coaches - well, the head coach just got fired literally last month, but he was awesome. In contrast to the super serious coach at Loko, he was the opposite. Of course, he can be hard too but he brought back the love for football and made it fun again.

[ Is there any relationship or connection between the men’s and women’s teams at these clubs? ]

I’d say we’re relatively isolated. At Loko, our base - where we train and go to the gym - was mainly for the youth teams and us. The men’s team has their base like an hour and 20 minute drive away, almost in the middle of the woods! Of course, we go and watch the games, we can always get free tickets if we want. But we weren’t eating together or anything.

At Dynamo, we are sometimes at the gym at the same time as the men’s team and chat with them. I know maybe two or three players relatively well - not like we go out to the bar but we’ll say hi and how’s it going. Since this year though, we moved to the hockey base and use the gym and watch film there. Then a bus picks us up and we drive a few minutes to the football field.

On the field, we’re on a turf field and the men’s team has a grass field right next to us, so we see them then as well. So, it’s closer at Dynamo, we have access to some of the same things but definitely not everything.

[ Have any of your friends or family been able to visit you in Moscow? ]

Yeah! In my first year, one of my good friends, Wyatt, we played soccer together when we were 5 or 6 - he’s a huge history fanatic, so when I told him I was moving to Moscow, he was really excited to visit! It was unfortunate timing with COVID because it was November and freezing and all the restaurants were closed but still, we made the most of it.

Then, this past year, my mom and sister came out. I was talking to the lady who does our visas and was like, ‘please, please, please, is there any way you could help me get tourist visas for my mom?’ She said, of course! They had to fly to New York and do the visa process and then they had to take a crazy route here because you can’t fly from New York to Moscow now. They were here for 7 or 8 days and it was amazing to have my family here. We’ll see if they can come again.

[ You mentioned that you may still want to go to medical school, how are you thinking about your future plans, especially now that your career is going so well on the field? ]

I think I can definitely still play football for a little while more. There are girls in this league that are 40 and still playing - I don’t think I can do that - that’s just not my body but I’ll keep playing for a while. I’ll keep playing until I can’t physically anymore, hopefully, save some money for med school, or look at med schools in different countries because the US is so expensive, and then yeah, I’ll go to school.

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