Villa’s women are going places and guiding them to the WSL in the city where I fell in love with football is an exciting challengeNext week it will be two months since my last game of football, and in that time my life has changed significantly. I have left
Juventus and moved home to
London from Turin. I have announced my retirement, and this week I joined Aston Villa as their sporting director for women’s football. It’s a full-circle moment for me: I grew up playing football in Birmingham and now I will start the next phase of my career in the city where I met the game.
![Aston Villa job feels right and I hope it helps other women into leading roles | Eni Aluko](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b303a54903ba7fa19197fbd969fb4bed72c4230f/0_173_4213_2529/master/4213.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctb3BpbmlvbnMucG5n&enable=upscale&s=16a34479ff12959eb86510f27b344255)
I always had a niggling feeling that this was going to be my last season in football. When I was first approached by Villa I was still at Juventus, and I thought it was something I would consider at the end of the campaign in Italy. But the more I thought about it the more excited I became, and in the end I felt my decision was between a role that can launch me into a second career on the executive side of football that might last for a decade or more, and at best another one- or two-year playing contract with Juventus or another club. In many ways, this opportunity pushed me into making the decision to retire.