2023-07-29 09:36:13
2023 Women’s Football World Cup dossier The legendary Brazilian striker, opposed this Saturday July 29 to the France team, is living her last World Cup at the age of 37, with the hope of winning the cup that is missing from her bountiful career.
“There won’t be a Formiga forever, there won’t be a Marta forever, there won’t be a Cristiane anymore.” Facing the camera, just out of the round of 16 of the 2019 World Cup by the France team, striker Marta invokes, on the lawn of the Océane stadium, in Le Havre, the mythical figures of Brazilian football. Formiga, seven-time participant in the Worlds (a record, men and women combined) and Cristiane, her accomplice and second top scorer in the yellow and green jersey. Behind Marta, therefore, top scorer and last representative of the selection, at the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, of this generation of female footballers who had to conquer everything, or almost, in a country where football practiced by women was prohibited until 1983, three years before the birth of the dazzling attacker.
At the dawn of a new confrontation with Les Bleues, in a group match on Saturday July 29 at noon, his call for relief seems to have been heard. Breathtaking against Panama, crushed by a score of 4-0 inflated by a hat-trick from Ary Borges, 23, the Brazilians landed with a bang in the World Cup. Marta, in the role of “supersub” or “super-substitute”, emerged 15 minutes from the final whistle to the ovations of the public. At 37, the prolific striker has her last chance to climb to the top of the world with the national team. The “Rainha Marta” (the queen) narrowly missed it in 2007, on a bitter defeat against Germany in the final of the edition in China, where she had all the same arrogated the Golden Boot with 7 achievements during the competition.
fierce grinta
Not hard to shell the exploits of the number 10: record of goals scored in the World Cup (17, one more than the former German title holder Miroslav Klose), six times best player of the year of Fifa , from 2006 to 2010, then in 2018, the year of the launch of the Women’s Golden Ball which she never lifted, too late to stick to the top of her performances, European champion at 18 upon her arrival at the club Swedish Umea IK… The start of an international club career between Sweden (which naturalized her in 2017) and the United States, lined up today at Orlando Pride. Back from a year of injury, the “best player in the world” (according to American star Megan Rapinoe) brings the glory of her stats back to the southern lawn as much as a fierce grinta. On and off the field.
It’s because she’s come a long way. Born in 1986 in the state of Alagoas, one of the poorest in the Brazilian Northeast, among a family of four whose mother had to take care of herself, the girl was deprived of school benches before she was 9 years old, lack of money. She plays soccer in secret with the boys, conquering her place despite the sexist jeers and boos. She hangs on, is spotted and goes by bus 2000 kilometers from her home to join a club at 14 years old. The rest, she writes between Sweden and the United States, therefore, but also with a brief stint at Santos FC in São Paulo, the historic club of Pelé, who himself has never shunned the comparison with his compatriot . The one who deploys on the ground, as he did, crazy technicality and formidable efficiency, not stingy with polished sombreros and hypnotic leg crossings.
“Hi Marta, you need to sleep, since you’re on the other side of the world. I hope you dream of what you accomplished a few hours ago,” wrote the legend Pelé, in an affectionate message on her Instagram account, when she was the first to plant a goal in five different Olympic Games. in July 2021 in Tokyo. “Your success is more than a personal best […] you are much more than a football player, he slipped. With your talent, you are helping to build a better world where women are gaining ground.” A few months earlier, the attacker had come out as a lesbian, a powerful snub to openly homophobic President Jair Bolsonaro, with the announcement of her engagement to Toni Deion Pressley, her teammate at Orlando Pride, who did not never so aptly named. Like that of “Queen”, for Marta, if her team flies away from Oceania at the end of August with the cup.
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