Madonna, soccer mom: Why the Queen of Pop was watching Tottenham’s Under-14 girls’ team – The Athletic
Half-time at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and the sultry tones of Madonna ring out over the public address system.
Spurs Women are 1-0 down to Chelsea, but there is at least one victory they can claim over their London rivals: for the second day in a row, the legendary singer herself is sitting in the Spurs end.
Just 24 hours earlier, the Queen of Pop was gracing the touchline on a grey and chilly London day supporting her adopted twin daughters, Stella and Estere, in a match for Spurs’ under-14 academy team. Now here she was again, sporting a pair of fabulous bug-eye sunglasses shielding her from, one can only assume, either the patent lack of north London sunshine or Spurs’ seventh missed chance of the first half.
Madonna posted about her daughters’ footballing exploits on Instagram over the weekend (Instagram/@madonna)
Madonna, the Material Girl, the OG pop icon, the woman who wore wedding dresses and set fire to cultural mores with songs such as Like A Virgin, is also, apparently, your friendly neighbourhood soccer mom.
Football has become a recurring thread in the tapestry of Madonna’s life. In 2017, it was reported that she moved to Lisbon after her 11-year-old son, David Banda, whom she adopted from Malawi in 2006 when he was 13 months old, joined Benfica’s youth academy. The Portuguese weekly magazine Visao reported: “Madonna is no longer a tourist, she now lives in Lisbon.”
Now, it is Madonna’s twins, born in Malawi in August 2012 and adopted by Madonna in February 2017 at the age of five, who have led her back pitchside.
If the image of Madonna driving her twins and their team-mates in a mini-van on a Saturday morning, potentially hauling Ziploc bags of sliced oranges and homemade granola bars pitchside as she adjusts a pair of round black shades through platinum locks, inspires an incredulous smile, perhaps more beguiling is the fact that Madonna’s twins are enrolled at Spurs.
The American singer and songwriter has a strong history with Spurs’ London rivals Chelsea, whom Spurs appropriately faced on Sunday afternoon. Her affiliation harks back to her marriage with Guy Ritchie, a well-known Chelsea fan, between 2000 and 2008, when Chelsea were in their pomp under Jose Mourinho.
However, Madonna has been a familiar face at Chelsea as recently as last season, when she twice attended men’s games at Stamford Bridge, including their dead-rubber defeat by Legia Warsaw in the Conference League quarter-finals at Stamford Bridge in April 2025.
The Chelsea links do not end there. Chelsea board member Barbara Charone, the UK-based American public relations veteran who co-founded MBC PR, has known Madonna for more than 40 years and is credited with helping the singer achieve international fame.
After Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly bought Chelsea in May 2022, Charone received an invitation to join the club’s board.
Madonna 🤝 Hung Up on the WSL
The iconic singer was in attendance for Tottenham v Chelsea after her daughter’s U14 match for Spurs. pic.twitter.com/RhUdIhvazA
— Match of the Day (@BBCMOTD) February 8, 2026
Despite the links, it is Spurs who have become the early home for Madonna’s young girls.
Spurs’ academy programme is open to players between the ages of 12 and 18. Stella and Estere play for their under-14s. As part of the academy programme, the girls have a minimum of three training sessions per week, which include technical, tactical and strength and conditioning sessions, as well as educational workshops in nutrition, psychology sessions, and trips and tournaments during school holidays.
Spurs’ women’s academy is an area of increasing focus for general manager Andy Rogers and the Spurs hierarchy, particularly after the appointment of Vinai Venkatesham as chief executive last year.
Over the past four years, 11 Spurs academy players have made competitive debuts for the first team, including Lenna Gunning-Williams, who was the first academy player to sign a professional contract with the club in July 2023.
As the club bid to close the gap to the WSL’s upper echelon and compete regularly for Champions League spaces, increasing the talent coming through the pathway is critical, and significant moves have been made to provide a foundation to do so.
Before the 2024-25 season, under-21s head coach Nick Hardy was appointed technical coaching manager of the women’s academy, with a focus on developing and progressing players and staff within the under-16s and under-19s.
Going into this season, Spurs underwent a significant restructuring of their academy programme following its reclassification to Category 1 status. Jenna Schillaci was appointed academy operations manager to provide day-to-day support and mentorship to the players, while Sabiha Jamal was promoted to under-19s head coach from the under-16s.
Matheus Vianna Scapin joined as backroom staff for the under-19s while also leading the under-16s, assisted by Stella Calderhead.
Along with the restructuring, women’s academy players share access to the main women’s building and have closer links to the first team to encourage better integration.
The academy programme, as well as Spurs’ ongoing first-team evolution under head coach Martin Ho, remains a work in progress, but to quote Madonna herself, nothing takes the past away like the future.
