Jessica Naz: My grassroots story

I grew up in Enfield, north London and my early memories of football were from watching my dad and brother playing. Before too long, I was joining in and learning the game myself!

It was by complete chance that I ended up signing for Tottenham, aged eight, having only really just started out on my football journey.

I was playing club football locally and quite often training with my dad on the side because they didn't let me train with the boys until they realised I was decent. We used to pass Tottenham's home pitch at the time but we didn't know this.

One day, we drove past it and there was a tournament going on. It was my first time seeing so many girls playing football at that point so we drove in and my dad asked if I could play.

I ended up scoring a couple of goals and did well so they said they wanted to sign me. I was just buzzing that I was actually going to play for a girls' team so I asked, 'Yeah, what's the team?' and they told me it was Tottenham.

I couldn't believe it, it had ended up being a tournament trial day and I hadn't had a clue.

I spent a few years at Tottenham, until I was around 12 or 13, when I was playing in another tournament and there was an Arsenal scout there. He approached my dad and said I should come down to trial.

I just thought I should go for it. At the time it was quite big for me, it was a new step in terms of level. I could tell even in the trial that the standard was higher and I just thought it was where I wanted to be.

At the time, Tottenham weren't playing at the level they're at now and we were scoring loads of goals every week. It was becoming a bit too easy and I felt like Arsenal offered a better path to the top. It felt like the kids there were twice the size as at Tottenham.

There were three of us who got in and on our first day we went to the Emirates Stadium where we got Leah Williamson giving a talk on how she's come through the age groups, so it's surreal that I now share an England dressing room with her. It was properly inspiring. And then we got a backpack with our kit, a water bottle. It just felt like I was getting somewhere.

I stayed at Arsenal, moving through the age groups, and then when I was 16 or so I started lingering around the first team and trained with them for a couple of months. I was with the likes of Leah, Jordan Nobbs and Kim Little.

These are big players and made me realise even more it's the level I wanted to get to. But I never want to be comfortable and I realised it was going to be hard for me to get in a team full of these stars.

I ended up going to Southgate College, which was linked to Tottenham, and their coaches used to come in and coach some of the girls. I used their facilities to train and they knew about me because their first team used to play the Arsenal U23s.

I told them about how I wanted to make the step up to the first team and the trust they had in me meant I felt good about moving back. Things had changed a lot there in the meantime, too. It felt like a different setup. I was able to do college in the morning and trained in the afternoon.

Getting minutes under my belt in that first season at Tottenham was huge and we managed to win promotion to the BWSL that year. Soon enough, I was coming up against the likes of Arsenal and Chelsea at first-team level, so that was great.

I had my England call-up in May, the day after we lost the FA Cup Final. It was quite a mad 24 hours but being part of it is a huge opportunity for me and the environment I want to be in. I've always challenged myself and I want to grasp this chance too.