Kerstin Casparij: Manchester City’s cult hero of post-match puns on creating a community of ‘lovely people’

“I’m a legend, where’s my Hall of Fame place?” Kerstin Casparij says laughing in response to a question about her outspokenness before quickly clarifying she is joking.

There is something of the cult hero about the 24-year-old Netherlands right-back. Since joining Manchester City from FC Twente in 2022, the defender has established herself as a key part of Gareth Taylor’s squad and recently signed a new deal that will keep her at the club until 2027. 

December’s contract extension announcement naturally came with some social media flair, as is often the case with Casparij. In one post, she conducted a choir of City fans singing a song about her, while in another post, she halted signing the contract and held the finger of her partner, Ruth, as the lyrics of Wicked’s Defying Gravity played out, a reference to Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande’s viral interview during the press tour for the film. It summed up Casparij: silly, very online, and authentically herself. 

One of the most active players on social media in the Women’s Super League, Casparij’s Instagram presence centres on the puns in her post-match captions. 

“DURing these 90 minutes, we went HAM,” she posted after a 4-0 win over Durham in the FA Cup last January. “Caption game strong,” replied one user, while another posted three laughing emojis. Following a big win over Liverpool last March, she received over 10,000 likes for the caption: “Wowsers, we really put four past the Scousers.”

Casparij has nearly 70,000 Instagram followers and over 25,000 on TikTok, not an insignificant following for a player who described herself as being “social media shy” before she started posting light-hearted comments at the beginning of 2023. 

“I was always told with social media, you can do more harm than good when it comes to reputation, so I never really did anything,” she tells at Manchester City’s training ground.

“At the start of 2023, I was like, ‘You know what? I think I’ve got quite a few funny captions, I’d like to do something about it’. So, that’s where it started.

“Social media can be dangerous for younger people. The big thing for me is when I decided I was going to be more present in social media, I wanted to stay true to who I am and I wanted to be myself.

“I find it really important to have interactions with people and learn from them and maybe they can learn something from me. That’s a very beautiful thing and I’ve now been able to create a little community of a lot of lovely people from a lot of different backgrounds and create that type of inclusivity.”

While her matchday captions were the starting point, Casparij has increasingly used social media to also talk about issues that are personal to her: mental health, having ADHD and being a queer woman. Writing on International Coming Out Day in October, she described coming out as being a “moment of freedom”, of “being able to finally breathe”.

“I want to use my voice to educate people, but also to create a safe environment and help people if they are struggling,” she says.

Casparij regularly makes TikToks and Instagram posts with her partner, but the decision to share their private life on the internet was not taken lightly. “I wanted to keep her private, especially when we first started seeing each other,” the defender says, adding that her growing profile contributed to her caution. 

“You want to protect your partner and the person you love,” she adds. “We had quite a few conversations about it and she started with opening up her Instagram profile, not being private anymore. Then we started posting TikToks and we got a lot of fun reactions. She does get some weird ones and she speaks to me about that. There are definitely a lot of conversations that we have.

“But also we think it’s important for younger people to see it. When I grew up, I didn’t have a lot of representation of queer women and queer relationships. I only got that when I started in senior football when I was 15 and my partner had that even later on. So to be that representation is important for us and we enjoy doing it.

“You don’t realise how impactful you are. I definitely don’t. A lot of people have made me aware of my voice. That makes me want to do it more to help people. I would have loved some representation when I was young to understand what’s happening in your brain with being queer. So to be able to be a safe space for people, and be someone people can relate to, is a beautiful thing.”

Following a run of poor results at the end of last year, she captioned pictures from a December Champions League loss to Barcelona with a message that said she felt it was hypocritical to just post and “be all things banter” when results went her way. 

“I felt I needed to say something,” she explains of that post. 

“People obviously love it when we win. ‘Let’s make fun of the opposition’. They think it’s really fun. But when we lose, or if I don’t perform well, and I still do a caption, all of a sudden I’m not thinking about football, I’m not being a good player, not being professional, which I think is silly because I’m not a hypocrite.

“If we don’t do well, I’m going to be the exact same because we play every three or four days. There’s a new game, a new opportunity and if something doesn’t go well in life, you don’t cry or sit down. You try and make it fun and you move on.”

She emphasises the importance of having a support network to deal with the criticism she receives. “It’s part of the job,” she says.

“The big difference for people who work in an office job is if they make a mistake, it is not really noticed and there might be a few people who say, ‘Oh, actually, you made a mistake here’.

“But if we make a mistake, there are thousands of people watching and a lot of them are like, ‘You know what? I’m going to take it to social media’.

“I have a very good support system, with my family, with my partner, but I do also have a therapist. If I struggle, I definitely speak to my therapist and that’s really helpful.”

Manchester City have had a lot of highs and lows over the past year. Last season, City were pipped to the WSL title on goal difference by Chelsea and this campaign they are 12 points off the big-spending reigning champions, having already lost four games in the league. Injuries to key players, such as captain Alex Greenwood and forward Lauren Hemp, have hindered them. While they took a lot of “power” from last year’s close finish, this season, she says, has been tough and cites “mental fatigue” as a factor because of the injuries. 

“We knew in this league, you cannot make any mistakes, especially not with Chelsea being as strong as they are, which you have to give credit to them for. We were very close last year and we messed it up ourselves. That’s hard, but you end up moving on,” Casparij says. 

Casparij has played every league minute this season, the only member of the squad to do so. She is hopeful this year that she could get her hands on some silverware with City for the first time — they are still in all three cup competitions. 

She is clearly a player who thrives on being engaged in life off the pitch. It is no surprise she was named Manchester City’s Community Champion, alongside men’s player Rico Lewis, last season. 

But no one could sum up Casparij’s attitude better than herself: “I’m just Kerstin. I’m just a random 24-year-old who is pretty decent at kicking a ball. But other than that, I’m just like anyone else.” 

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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