#fifa women's best player of the year

[adascore]

The Awarded Silence

pairings: alexia putellas x lyonnais!reader / lucy bronze x lyonnais!reader / mary earps x lyonnais!reader / sarina wiegman x lyonnais!reader + mapi and ingrid cameos!

warnings: very awkward. angst. swearing.

author's note: lucy meddling with her two captains... nothing good can come of that, can it? hope you all enjoy this third part! also I’m aware the gif is not the right award ceremony, but couldn’t find a better gif.

part 1 | part 2 | masterlist

•••••••

With the end of a season also came the prestigious award shows, something both Y/N and Alexia were all too familiar with. Although it was different this time around; it would be the first time they would actually go up against each other in the big categories.

It was clear to everyone who would be walking away with each one of them. Not only had Y/N walked away with both the European Championship and the Champions League title, she'd been named the MVP of both those tournaments. Some of the media were trying to hype it up as another competition between them, but even Alexia was aware she had no chance of walking away with anything as long as Y/N was nominated for it as well.

First one up had been the UEFA Women's Player of the Year, which Y/N had taken home, alongside Sarina who had won for Women's Coach of the Year.

That was followed up by the Ballon d'Or. It was a big deal as they were the clear frontrunners, and whoever won would become the first player to win the accolade for a second time. Again, Y/N made history and had accepted the gold award. Alexia hadn't gone to the ceremony, citing illness as the reason why.

The England captain had been upset by her absence, she hadn't seen nor spoken with Alexia in months and had hoped the ceremony in France would have been an opportunity to catch up. She'd smiled when the midfielder sent her a congratulatory message, along with a shout-out on her Instagram story- stating how she was deserving of the award.

It would take a few more months before they'd see each other, at ‘The Best FIFA Football Awards' in Paris. Along with being nominated for Best Women's Player, they would both be featured in the Women's World 11.

The first interaction came when they were hastily put next to each other as they received their trophies. As the cameras clicked, Y/N and Alexia exchanged smiles that masked the tension between them.

''I think it would be difficult for anyone to beat this team.'' Lucy grinned, speaking into the microphone that was attached to her cheek.

The women received another applause and made their way off the stage, handing over their trophies that would be handed back to them at the end of the ceremony.

A few winners later, Kylian took the stage to present ‘The Best FIFA Women's Player' award. They showed a pleasant montage of Alexia, Y/N and Alex- a compilation of their season's highlights.

Y/N felt a mix of excitement and nervousness. She knew the PSG player would call out her name, but you never knew if they wanted to stir up some controversy.

The England captain was sat on the first row, meanwhile some of her teammates and fellow female players were scattered in the other rows. Alex sat right behind her, while Alexia sat on the other side of the room with her Barcelona teammates.

The room hushed as Kylian unfolded the envelope. ''And the Best FIFA Women's Player is… Y/N Y/L.''

Applause erupted, and Y/N nervously got up from her seat. On the pitch, the striker was confident, but making speeches in front of a full room filled with people in power and fellow players, was not something she had gotten used to.

The Brit turned around and reached her hand out for Alex to take, a silent sign of respect for the season the American had had. She would have done the same if Alexia had been seated there, but walking to the other side of the room would have taken too much time.

Y/N carefully walked up the stairs, trying not to fall as she was wearing heels. Kylian noticed, and made his way over to offer his arm to her. She smiled, and accepted, holding onto the striker's arm.

He congratulated her, pressing three celebratory kisses on her cheek. ''Félicitations, Championne.'' (''Congratulations, Champion.'') Kylian said.

''Merci.'' (''Thank you.'') Y/N grinned, and she took her place at the microphone.

''Uh, thank you so much to all the people that voted. It's a big compliment to have your fellow players and coaches vote for you, so thank you so much.'' She started off, her voice a bit shaky as her eyes darted around the room.

''I, also, quickly want to acknowledge Alex and Alexia. It's an honour to be nominated alongside you, and I want to thank you for all the contributions you have made so far and for the great football we get to see from you. Thank you.'' Y/N glanced at both of them, giving them a nod as the crowd applauded them.

The camera panned to both women. The American striker mouthed a ''Thank you'' to the younger player, once teammates at Lyon. Alexia clapped, but maintained a composed facade.

She had also clapped when the Brit's name was announced, concealing any type of disappointment she felt. While she had anticipated the outcome, the sight of Y/N claiming the award instead of her was something hard to swallow- in the same way it had been hard to watch her rival lift the Champions League trophy the previous year.

Her applause was genuine, and deep inside she knew that Y/N deserved it more than her, but Alexia would never admit that out loud. As the striker continued her speech, the midfielder struggled with being happy for her colleague, while dealing with her own unspoken desire for recognition.

Lucy, seated beside Alexia, offered her a knowing smile. The Barcelona defender had seen it from close by, how everything was a competition for them. She'd noticed it at her new club, where the lost finals against Lyon served as reminders for the team to do better, and to not let that happen again. She'd noticed it in her England teammate, and how tense she had been before the friendly against Spain.

On the other side sat Mapi, concerned over how her friend was handling it. ''It's okay, Ale.'' She whispered in their native language.

''I know, it's just an award.'' Alexia replied, not taking her eyes off Y/N.

The Spanish defender dropped it, giving Ingrid a look before focusing on the winner as well.

''… cause I couldn't have done it without them. Uh, yeah, congratulations to all the other winners as well. Thank you.'' Y/N concluded.

The audience applauded one last time, and she got off the stage. She hid her face in embarrassment as Mary whistled loudly, feeling hot as her friend hyped her up.

After was seemed like forever, the ceremony was done.

Most attendees got up from their seats, but didn't leave the main hall as they walked over to catch up with people they knew or to get to know other people.

Y/N got up after about a minute, deciding to go talk to Christiane and Wendie, her Lyon teammates. However, the universe or someone called Lucy Bronze had better ideas.

''Hey, Captain.'' She heard the defender greeting her.

As the striker turned around, she was met with a surprise. There stood Lucy, accompanied by none other than Alexia Putellas. The Brit wore a smile, her eyes gleaming with mischief.

''Hi, Bronzey.'' Y/N responded, slightly caught off guard.

The English internationals shared a hug, Lucy whispering a congratulations in her ear. ''Thanks, you too.''

As the two parted, Y/N's eyes fell on an awkwardly standing Alexia.

''Y/N, meet Alexia. Alexia, this is Y/N.'' Lucy said, her eyes darting between the pair.

The two captains exchanged an uneasy glance. ''Uh, yeah, we know each other, Luce.'' The striker stated, feeling very uncomfortable with the situation.

Lucy chuckled, completely unfazed by the discomfort she had purposely created. ''Oh, I know. It's just that fans online were saying that they wanted me to have you guys become friends, so I'm just keeping my promise to them.''

Y/N and Alexia forcibly grinned at the admission, both aware of what people said about them on social media. The latter cleared her throat. ''Uh, congratulations again. You really deserve it.''

The Lyon player nodded, a somewhat more genuine smile appearing. ''Thanks, I appreciate. You as well, with the, uh, World 11.''

''Thank you.''

Another pause hung in the air, the atmosphere thick with awkwardness. It was as if their shared teammate had conspired to make this encounter as uncomfortable as possible.

''Oh, there's Sarina, excuse me, ladies.'' Lucy swiftly escaped, using their Dutch coach as part of her scheme.

That left the players facing each other. The tension was uncomfortable, and neither seemed eager to break the silence that had settled between them.

After a moment, Y/N was the first to give in. ''So, how is your knee doing?'' She asked, noticing the Spaniard was no longer holding onto her crutches.

Alexia's eyes briefly flickered towards Lucy, who was signing with her hands to keep going. ''Uh, good. Yeah, if everything goes to plan, I should be ready by the end of the season.'' She replied, a small smile present.

''So… World Cup ready then?''

The Catalan shifted on her feet at the mention of the tournament. ''That's delicate right now.''

''Oh, how, uh, is that situation going at the moment?'' Y/N had momentarily forgotten about the mutiny going on in the Spanish national team. She knew Alexia supported the girls that had made themselves unavailable, but they'd never had any conversations about it.

Alexia shrugged her shoulders. ''It's being worked on, it's… a lot.'' From the way she was speaking, her colleague could sense it wasn't a topic the midfielder wanted to happily chat about.

''I understand. I just want to say that a lot of people are behind you guys, and want to see change happen,'' Y/N softly spoke, ''me included.''

''Thank you.'' Alexia sounded genuinely grateful for her words.

Y/N has been a huge advocate for women's football ever since she became a professional player, so her acknowledging the Las 15's stance meant more to Alexia than she could express.

''Sorry, could I get a picture of you two?'' One of the official FIFA photographers interjected, pointing at the two of them.

The pair shared a look, seemingly asking without words if the other was okay with it. They nodded at each other, and hesitantly put their hands on one another's back, posing for the camera.

''Thank you.'' The man thanked them, walking over to another group of players.

''It was nice talking to you. I'm, uh, gonna see what my teammates are up to.'' Y/N politely excused herself. The conversation was turning out more bearable than how it started, but she still wanted nothing more than to leave.

''Same. Um, good luck with your matches, and maybe we see each other in the semifinals?'' Alexia hinted at a potential Champions League clash.

The Lyon striker chuckled. ''We'll see, Putellas. Have a nice night.''

As Y/N made her way to her teammates, Alexia watched her departure with mixed emotions. Yes, she was happy that they'd had a conversation. But, it was frustrating that there still seemed to be a wall between them, and a big one at that.

What was it that always held them back from truly opening up to one another?

''You know she's going to kill you once she's finished with that conversation, right?'' Mary said to her fellow Lioness, subtly taking a glimpse at Alexia and Y/N.

Lucy smirked, her eyes barely leaving her two captains. ''Who? Y/N or Alexia?'' She laughed.

''Both.'' Sarina and Mary chorused, laughing now as well.

''Nah, they'll have to work together for that. Never gonna happen.'' She continued joking.

The England coach shook her head. ''Why are you doing this again?''

''Because I wanna have fun, and although I am happy with my little trophy, this show is super boring. Just want to spice things up,'' Lucy explained, ''besides, fans will love it. The Queens of football talking together. La Reina and La Reine.''

Sarina and Mary exchanged skeptical glances, unsure of how either players would react. ''I'm not so sure Y/N will appreciate your idea of fun.'' Mary commented.

''Oh, what could go wrong?'' The defender genuinely did not see the problem. ''See, they're even taking a picture together.'' Lucy pointed out, seeing the pair in front of the photographer.

After the picture, Y/N gracefully excused herself and began walking towards where Lucy, Mary, and Sarina were standing. She joined the trio with a forced smile, attempting to suppress any visible signs of annoyance.

''Nice reunion there?'' Sarina tried to lighten her captain up, noticing her gloomy expression.

''We talked.'' She answered. It wasn't a proper response, more like a factual statement.

Y/N wasn't sparing Lucy a glance, the defender, however, remained unfazed. ''That's nice.''

''Congrats, by the way, darling. No one deserves this more than you.'' Mary tried to deflect, not a fan of the tension. Sarina smiled at the reminder of all the awards her team collected. ''Yeah, congratulations.''

''Thank you, you too, Mearps. You almost made me cry with your speech. Sarina, you didn't make me cry, but yours was really nice as well.'' She turned to her coach, managing to still make a teasing comment.

Sarina laughed. ''Well, thank you.''

''Uh, I'm gonna say hi to my, uh, other teammates.'' Y/N nodded her head towards where Wendie and Christiane were standing with some of the Lyon staff.

She then glanced at Lucy. ''Or you want to set that up for me as well?'' She sarcastically chuckled.

''Hey, come on. I thought you guys were friends now.'' Lucy said, a lame attempt at defending herself.

''Who said that?'' Y/N frowned.

''Jill.'' The defender retorted.

''What a source,'' the captain scoffed, ''we're not friends, and I don't need you to make us friends.''

''How bad was that conversation that you're this pissed at me?'' Lucy asked, not expecting her friend to be this irritated over her actions.

''Just don't do that ever again. It was fucking embarrassing.'' With that, she made her way over to her Lyon teammates.

Mary and Sarina slowly glanced back to Lucy, whose smirk had been practically smacked off of her face.''What could go wrong, aye, Bronzey?''

On the other side of the room, Alexia carefully walked over to Mapi and Ingrid after Y/N excused herself from the conversation.

''You look like you need alcohol.'' The Spanish defender noted, taking in her friend's expression.

Alexia sighed, smoothing her hair down. ''Neither of us enjoyed that.''

''Lucia really did you dirty there.'' Mapi responded, glancing to where her teammate was speaking with the England camp.

Ingrid offered a sympathetic smile. ''I think she had good intentions, she meant it well.'' She chimed in.

The Barcelona captain nodded. ''I know, but it was so awkward.'' Alexia grimaced, cringing at the reminder of how the two football stars had just uneasily stood in front of one another.

''You'll be fine,'' Mapi caressed her back, ''one day you'll be able to laugh about this, trust me.''

Alexia gave her an unimpressed look. ''I'd rather not.''

The defender glanced at her girlfriend. ''So oblivious.'' She whispered to Ingrid.

''What was that?''

''Nothing.''

[architect-2015]

Hand In Hand | mapi león

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In which Kennedy Russo and María León have been a couple since Russo debuted at Fc Barcelona in 2020 - this well know to the public - so after the Fifa WWC 2023 the lioness gives insight of the pain caused by the spanish federation, she tells the players story.

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The Call Up

Kennedy’s life since joining Barcelona has been as sweet as it could be, a record breaking transfer from Manchester United, winning league title after league title, winning the Champions League after the heartbreaking defeat the previous year and The summer of 22’ winning the European Championship along side her little sister Alessia.

But the joys of her international careers do not match those of her girlfriends, after their quarter final knockout in the Euros tournament, the truth began to spill about the Spanish Football Federation: the lack of respect for players, the harmful environment and the disrespectful head coach - Jorge Vilda.

María León had always been one to speak her mind, never let her thoughts and opinions be squashed by others. So she did what was right - She took a stand.

Mapi and 14 other Spaniards resigned from the national team, with a dream for change. A dream that turned into a nightmare.

The Federation took no notice of these players.

The game carried on.

So when the World Cup call ups were around the corner, they knew they had to give up their childhood ambitions to win a World Cup, to stand up for what is right.

————

In the cozy living room of Mapi León’s home, the couple laid out on the sofa - arms tight around one another. A conversation needed sat unspoken plaguing the air.

“Would you be okay if i played?” a shy mumble left Kennedy’s mouth, she obviously wanted to play as anyone would in a World Cup but she also wanted to support her other half.

María shifted undeath the 27 year old, sitting them up and holding her girlfriends face in her warm hands.

“mi corazón, of course you should play, you’re coming off the back of your biggest international win you can’t give up on your World Cup dream just because of me. That can’t happen, I’ll make sure it wont happen.”

Mapi’s voice was thick with emotion. She hadn’t given up on her dream - simply put it on the back burner - so the fact Kennedy would consider sacrificing hers made her angry. Not angry at her girlfriend, she could never be angry with her but angry with the world that power hungry men like Vilda not only effected her career but the game as a whole.

“Cariño you’ll go, you’ll play for your country, your sister, you’ll play for yourself and i’ll be here cheering as loud as i can being as proud as i can.”

————

The Tournament

The older Russo had excelled during the tournament, many sung her praises complementing her performance and goal scoring ability and her link ups with her younger sister.

She was making her opinion know with her now well recognised celebration, creating a ‘M L’ with her hands into the closest camera. A nod to her partner back home.

Getting through to the final was the best night of her career this far, celebrating with her team, her sister and her best friend Lucy Bronze - a women who had shared experiences of world cup disappointment like Kennedy.

To then find out Spain would be joining them well that was a feeling she couldn’t put into words, fear, excitement, being endlessly proud of her spanish friends for making to their first final but most of all anger, anger that María and many other couldn’t have their World Cup moment, anger their dreams had been taken away, anger that selfish men once again had come out on top.

————

The Final

{María❤️}

mi corazón, good luck with the game tonight. You’ll play amazing and hopefully you’ll be the one lifting that trophy! te amo! xxx

It was half time and the lionesses were down 1-0, a beautiful goal from Olga had put the spaniards infront. The eldest Russo had been yellow carded in the first 45 minutes for straight up shouting at the spanish head coach - every wrong action he made, she countered with a word to the referee or to his face. It was now clear that the young women had a strong desire to make this match miserable for the man. It’s the least she could do after all the damage he’s caused.

A speech from Sarina and Millie had instilled some determination into the squad but walking back out from the tunnel had been the thing to create a fire inside of Kennedy.

The second half had now been played in until the 87’ minute after a saved penalty from Jenni Hermoso, one in the opinion of Kennedy was well off the penalty spot.

A well timed pass from Lucy Bronze had Kennedy flying past the spanish back line, continuing her run towards Cata Coll, slotting it with a perfect strike into the top left corner.

The crowd erupts, before Kennedy could process what had happened, she had fallen victim to a human pile on- tears of overwhelming joy overflowed from her eyes.

A whistle was blown, a VAR check.

The words ‘possible offside’ had create a looming feeling of fear within the midfielder.

[CHECK COMPLETE: OFFSIDE]

The floor seemed to fall from beneath her feet, breath leaving her chest involuntarily, the spanish chants invading her ear as sobs left her mouth. Arms looked around her frame: Lucy. “Head up Russo we have time, we’ve got to keep going”

Many minutes of added time passed until the final whistle blew, they failed, they had lost. He had won.

Crashing to her knees - in that moment she couldn’t find it in herself to feel happy for her Barcelona teammates, she couldn’t begin to imagine how this would effect María’s international career, she could only feel the guilt seeping in. She was offside. She has ruined the lionesses chance of becoming world champions. She let her country down.

Whilst her time stood still as she laid there on the grass, the world moved on.

A delicate hand was placed in her back and her sister’s floral perfume surrounded her like a blanket of safety. Alessia. Her manicured hands hooked underneath her older sisters arms, pulling her into a sitting position.

All the adrenaline had left Kennedy , making a feeble attempt to support herself only led to her head falling onto the shoulder of her sister, looking for some form of comfort. A comfort she knew could only be provided by María.

It felt like hours that the sister duo sat on that pitch, their shirts now soaked with sweat and tears. A sobbing Lucy Bronze had joined the circle, arm in arm the three walked towards the tunnel of spaniards - who were eager to hold the trophy in their grasp.

The walk was agonising, through the rows of players, to shake hands and then to be bestowed with a silver medal. She like Mapi lived with a ‘second is the first loser’ mentality.

Her time on the pitch concluded with watching the trophy being lifted from afar, her eyes glued in the celebrations of the man she despised.

————

The Interview

“So Kennedy tell me how are you feeling?”

She hated interviews, especially after a loss.

“Uh- It’s hard you know. I’ve now had the opportunity to play in three world cups and i’m honoured to have done that but it’s just not a nice feeling to inch closer and closer every time to then fail, in the biggest moment of my career i was offside so… yeah it’s not a nice feeling at all.”

Anyone who was watching the interaction could tell that the Russo women was actively trying to keep her emotions at bay. Little things like tapping her foot, the furrow between her brown, and most noticeable rubbing her thumb harshly across the skin of her wrist - above a fine line tattoo of a lion.

“You are referring to your goal that was not allowed due to it being offside, do you agree with that decision?”

“Well it’s not up to me to undermine the decisions made by the referee, whilst some of them i do not agree with at the end of the day it’s not my job. I guess it just wasn’t in our cards to win today and yeah we’re all disappointed but we’ll come back from this. Train harder, play smarter. Our squad is full of young people who are no where near finished with their world cup dreams.”

“Now we saw you had some confrontations during the game with the spanish head coach, are you allowed to comment on that?”

“I mean i’m probably not but i can say i do not like Jorge Vilda, not as a coach and not as a person. When you are given the role of a head coach it is your job to keep your players safe, to respect your players, to respect the game and make sure your players have a good working environment. He does none of that. He abuses the authority he has been given and i find it disgusting. The RFEF and Jorge Vilda have shown on countless occasions their lack of professionalism.”

“And can i question you on your celebration from this tournament?”

“Of course so, my celebration is for someone back home, someone i said i would play for and i did. It was upholding my promise i made to her and to others that you shouldn’t let someone else tarnish your desire and whilst they cannot be here, i am so i said i’d carry that desire for all of us.”

“Is that in reference to the players of the spanish national team that are not here? You also said ‘she’ and it’s public knowledge that you and a certain Mapi León are in a relationship, did you see play for her”

“Every footballer has dreamt of playing and winning a world cup, and to be able to do that is the greatest achievement anyone could have. We know as players especially as women that things don’t always go our way - but to be able to stand up for what you believe to the scale those women did and continue to do is incredible, i’m so unbelievably proud of them because fear is a big factor in taking a stand. You could protest but if you fear the results, you won’t get anywhere. I stand hand in hand and in full support of those women. The game cannot progress unless there is change.”

————

Kennedy Russo - England national player - fined for statement made in a post match interview in regards to RFEF and Jorge Vilda.

In a post match interview after world cup final loss, Kennedy Russo who plays for the England National Team and FC Barcelona was fined by the RFEF for some comments she made on their in her words ‘lack of professionalism’

Whilst Sarina Weigman or The Lionesses are yet to comment on this, the decision was made to send Russo back to Barcelona prematurely.

————

Back home

There was no place she would rather be.

A silver WWC medal was sat on a shelving unit above her tv, among other items she had won over the course of her career.

Walking through the shared house towards the bedroom was the most exciting part. Finally being reunited with María after this last month.

Opening the door, a warm light flooded through the windows. Mapi laid asleep under the thin layer of sheets and a little black furball had taken his place on Kennedy’s pillow.

Taking a seat beside her girlfriend, her hand begins it’s course through her bleached hair. Leaning down she places a delicate kiss on her partners neck, seemingly waking her up in the process.

“Buenos días, sleepyhead”.

“Mmm? mi corazón? hola”

María shoots up from her position to wrap her arms around her lover, her face concealed in Kennedy’s neck. Tears of relief are flowing down her cheeks, she had missed this. She had missed her.

Russo shifts them so her girlfriend is sat on her lap whilst Kennedy’s back is against the light green headboard. Whispers of reassurance dance around the room as many kisses are placed on any exposed skin.

“I’m so proud of you Cariño but i’m so glad you’re back”

And while the World Cup had not gone the way anyone had planned, it was alright. This was all they needed - no medal could ever match the love they hold for one another.

wow a non WWE fic, i might start writing some more woso stuff but who knows also i dint speak spanish so some stuff might be incorrect ❤️

[mrchiipchrome]

Mothers

W.C.- 3k

Your mother didn’t plan on having you at the young age of 15, but after spending 9 months inside your mother you came out a perfectly healthy baby in the year 2000. She had the support of her parents, your grandparents, the second she told them she was expecting and they helped her raise you.

They took care of you while she was away in school and they helped drop you off at numerous football practices and games. You were there for your mothers graduation from secondary school when you were 3, and then later for when she got her undergraduate degree in nursing. When you were 16, she got her license and could officially begin her practice in the intensive care unit.

Nobody was prouder than you when she got it and you made sure that everybody knew that your mother, the one that had you at 15 had become a doctor.

Still, despite her intensive job she made sure to come and see you play at least once a month, to bring you to practice the days she wasn’t called in and to make sure that she told you that she loved no one like she loved you. When you started to play in the boys teams, ‘cause there weren’t enough girls who wanted to play in your town, she supported you. Everytime you came home with scraped up knees or a sprained wrist, she took care of you like a mother as she joked about you being her first ever patient with how clumsy you are.

When your grandmother died, you were nearly 17 and on the cusp of breaking into the senior national team after having outplayed some of the older players in the U23 camp and playing in the first team for your club. Now everything you did was to make her as proud as you could, her last wish was for you to make the senior teams both club and country. And so when you were 17 years old both her wishes came true when you got selected into the England Euros squad, where you actually got to play some minutes in the group stages and then in the closing minutes of the knockout matches. In the end you got a bronze medal and 2 goals in your resume as a substitute.

At 18 you signed with Arsenal and at 19 you were picked for the World cup squad with starting minutes. Unfortunately, an elbow to the face in the USA game had you sitting out the bronze medal match against Sweden, your eye socket and nose fractured. You had seen how worried your mother looked in the stands as you went down, not just from a mother’s point of view but also a doctors . It looked gruesome. But the worst part, you could do nothing as your team was losing.

But through the experience of the incredible loss you grew stronger, the will to win overwhelmed the little voice in your head telling you that it wasn’t possible or that you couldn’t do it. So you continued to train and get better, all while getting mentored by the Arsenal women and winning award after award along the way.

And now at 23, you’re one of the most accomplished youngsters in women’s football after having won the Euros and the subsequent golden boot. And now there was no one prouder than your mother and grandfather. You knew your grandma was watching over your every move and cheering you on from wherever you go when you die.

Winning the Fifa Women’s best player for the 21/22-season, beating out your teammate and the legendary Alexia Putellas had you shell shocked mouth hanging open like an idiot. But when you went up to accept the award, you credited your grandparents and your mother for your success before thanking your coaches. Now that trophy is located on a shelf at your mothers house like most of your other trophies, the only one that lays at home in your apartment is the medal you got for the Euros win.

People hadn’t really noticed your mother before the closing game against Bayern, where she had gotten a leave of absence from her workplace. She was the first one you went to, nearly collapsing into her arms at the sidelines before returning to your teammates to celebrate. Fortunately, the Arsenal media team managed to capture the sweet moment between the mother and daughter, later posting it to TikTok where they captioned it ‘Like mother like daughter’.

Unbeknownst to you, the video went completely viral with thousands of people simping over your mother. You were much too busy to spend unnecessary time on social media, so you had not seen the people obsessing over your mother or the ones asking if your father could fight. That was before you went on international break, excited to finally meet your girlfriend again after a few weeks of only being able to communicate over the phone.

—-

Stepping out of the taxi, you come face to face with St George’s Park once again. You stand still for a couple of seconds before walking in through the entrance, immediately seeing a member of the media team with their fist up. You spud them before continuing your walk to the front desk where the names of your roommates stood.

Your eyes flit over the paper before you find your name scribbled beside Alessia’s and you do a silly dance in your place, happy that you could cuddle with your girl after weeks apart.

An arm slinging around your shoulder has you coming to your senses, looking to your right you see your girlfriend standing there. You pull her in by the waist as you lean your cheek on top of her head just taking a moment to hug her and relish in her company before everything becomes hectic. What you don’t plan on is one of your bestfriends slamming into you and making all three of you fall to the ground. You hear Ella start to speak loudly in your ear but you can’t focus on anything she’s saying, not with Alessia laying on top of you, her body fitting like a puzzle piece to your own.

Slapping a hand over Ella’s gaping mouth you take a moment to relax in the silence, already knowing that this camp was going to be like hell if it continued like that. Alessia puts her hands on either side of your body before pushing herself up to her feet.

She reaches her hand out towards you but before you are able to grab it, Tooney has. Alessia starts the motion of pulling her up, but as she shoots you a wink you know exactly what would occur. Alessia loosens her grip on Ella's hand before she has time to react, dropping her on her arse. The lobby explodes with laughter before you pull yourself up, walking up to your room before going to sleep as soon as your head hits the pillow, Alessia joining you after a short time.

The next few days pass unnecessarily fast and before you know it you’re lining up next to Brazil, ready for the first ever women’s Finalissima. You dominated the first half going into halftime 1-0 up, and with your versatility giving you the ability to drive up the field and create chances while being able to also drop back down and help defend.

In the next half it seems like Brazil has woken up from their stupe and they start pressing in a way that has your defense scrambling and you realize that if you want to prevent Brazil from scoring you will have to help out more at the farther end of the field.

When the ball leaves the Brazilian players' feet, you know it is going into the goal and you can only pray for their penalties to not follow the same path.

You find yourself in an incredibly stressful situation as possibly the last penalty taker, it all depended on whether the ball hits the back of the net or not. Feeling strong hands place themselves on your back and a soft whisper of “You’ve got this” from your girlfriend has all your nerves washing away and your senses clear, the only focus on putting the ball in the back of the net.

Looking towards the crowd, you try to spot your mother and grandfather. When you catch sight of them you gain even more confidence as most people in the stadium couldn’t look on, your family just looked on with smirks and knowing looks on their faces.

You place the ball in the penalty spot, completely relaxed and calm despite having run around the pitch for a full 90 minutes plus stoppage time. The goalkeeper tries to distract you, jumping around and pointing at different parts of the net but you see the obvious dread in her face. You’re known for absolutely slamming the ball into the goal with an uncanny precision, especially penalties.

Kissing your fingers before pressing them into the shield resting above your heart, you start your runup. As you strike the ball with a power entirely your own you can feel how it’s going to hit the back of the net, it’s a feeling you’ve experienced many times before so many times that it’s become a staple of your matches.

The roaring of the fans confirm your thoughts and start running around the pitch all while expressing your delight through a loud yell echoing loud over the fans. Soon enough your teammates catch up to you and trap you in a tight embrace that you have no intention of escaping. As they start to depart from the team hug, Alessia and you remain in a tight embrace, covering your mouths when you speak to each other.

Whispers of ‘I love you so much’ and ‘I am so proud of you’ are exchanged before you are interrupted by a staff member informing you that the medal ceremony would take place in a short bit. You go and stand with your team as the shimmering medals are placed around your necks, walking towards the podium set up for you with a smile that could light up the entirety of Wembley.

Watching as Leah and Mary lift the trophy high above their heads has you feeling an immense sense of pride and joy. Proud to be part of this record breaking team.

As soon as you’re done with taking all the pictures needed featuring your medal, you’re off heading in the direction of your mother. Noticing the smile on her face, the one you inherited, has your feet moving faster in her direction. You grip the medal between sweaty fingers and pull it off, putting it around your mother’s neck.

“You’re the real champion here Ma. Thank you so much for being here today and supporting me, I love you” She replies with her own ‘I love you’, putting her fists up and doing your own celebration you made with her as a child by putting your own up and kissing them before double fistbumping her.

Staying with your family for a little longer, you depart from them to go and celebrate with your team. You barely reach your girlfriend before you’re whisked away for an interview with the broadcasting.

Putting on the headset and taking the mic from the staff, you hear the recognisable voice of Alex Scott flooding through your headphones.

“-And now we’re joined by the Euros and Finalissima winner, Y/n Y/l/n. How are you feeling after winning yet another trophy? I imagine you must feel quite ecstatic.”

“Spot on Alex, but yeah I am in disbelief honestly. Brazil were in form today and were incredible opponents. Yeah so this is an accomplishment we’re fortunate enough to experience.”

You spend the next few minutes speaking to the former player, talking about a large range of things before the topic of your mother comes up.

“I saw you were giving your medal to your mother earlier, is that something you always do?” Alex questions you.

“I usually give her all my medals and awards because I don’t have the space for them at my apartment. I've given her all but the Euros trophies as those are on a shelf in my bedroom. A reminder that I can do anything I set my mind to.” Your mother had always been the safekeep of your trophies, even as you reached adulthood she took care of them for you.

“Speaking of your mother, have you seen the comments circulating?”

Clear confusion lays over your face like a blanket, no clue about these ‘comments’ apparently regarding your mother.

“Comments? What comments?”

“You haven’t heard?! Oh boy you’re in for a ride.”

You can feel how whatever’s going to come out of her mouth next won’t be something you will enjoy hearing.

“Before you start, I feel like I won’t enjoy what you’ll say so before you continue I’ll need my emotional support human. Just a second.”

Sticking your fingers in your mouth and blowing, you let out a deafening wolf whistle loud enough to catch Alessia’s attention.

As Alessia turns towards you with her big blue doe eyes, you can’t help but practically melt under her affectionate gaze. Realizing that you are still on national television, you quickly wave her over.

When she stands beside you, the arm hanging by your side instinctively wraps around her waist in a protective grip. The same staff member that gave you your headphones hands Alessia a pair to be able to understand.

“Okay, so now that my emotional support human is here you are allowed to continue.”

Alessia smiles at the cheeky comment, the smile soon turning into a confused frown, not knowing the subject of conversation.

“I can see how you’re a bit confused there Alessia, so I’ll catch you up to speed. I was just asking Y/n if she had seen the comments under the Arsenal post, to which she said she hadn’t so I’m telling you both now.”

Judging by the mortified expression that crosses Alessia’s face you deduce that she most definitely knows exactly what comments Alex is talking about. You send her a skeptical look before telling Alex to start telling you about the comments.

“Arsenal posted a TikTok after the game against Bayern of you hugging your mother over the barrier. That video has gone viral, with thousands of people ‘simping’ over her in the comments.”

Even without hearing these comments you’re horrified, people hitting on your mother or thinking she was attractive wasn’t something new. It came with having a young mother but you’d never really been too bothered by them before. But now, knowing that thousands of people have the hots for your mother makes you want to crawl into bed and stay there until your last breath.

“Really?! My mother? That’s so weird on so many different levels bro…that’s just so weird and frankly quite gross. Don’t get me wrong, my mother is an incredible person, but knowing that thousands of people think that your mother is attractive is really unsettling. Now I’m curious about what they’ve said.”

Alessia nods along to your statement, knowing how much you struggled with seeing people on the internet thirsting for her and to now have people thirsting over your mom would make it worse.

“Ready? Okay, ‘Who was supposed to tell me that Y/n Y/l/n’s mom was such a MILF?’” Alex’s reading leaves you dry heaving as you quickly realize your mistake of wanting to hear the comments. Alessia pats your back in a ploy to comfort you all while holding back a giggle at your vivid reaction.

Continuing her assault on your ears, Alex recounts many different comments surrounding your mother and you have an equally vivid reaction to each one. Alessia keeps on rubbing your back in circles, though she can’t hold her laugh back anymore, the brilliant sound your only savior from the extreme embarrassment of the situation. Social media is already flooding with new memes of your reactions and you know that you’re going to be memed for the rest of your lifetime.

“Stop, stop! I tap out! No more. I love you Alex, but enough. Thank you for the interview, I’ll see you soon.”

You remove the headphones from your head and hand them and the microphone back to the staff before making your way back to the locker room, where it seems like people have already gotten a hold of the memes. Even Arsenal’s official page has plastered your reaction all over their social media.

When Alessia and you go and visit your mother a few weeks later, they’re both amused to realize your inability to look her in the eyes. Their apparent shared love for tormenting you makes your life a living hell over the next few hours and as you settle in your car to drive home you tell her,

“You’re sleeping on the couch tonight.”

“No I’m not” She replies through a smug smirk.

“Yeah you are”

“Unless you don’t want to sleep tonight I’m sleeping in our bed”

You hate how well she knows you and your sleeping habits while she’s near. Your only response is a huff and Alessia knows that she’s won this time. You let her think that for a little before sneaking your hand onto her thigh as you keep on driving, paying little attention to her. When you feel goosebumps rising under your hand and see her shiver out of the corner of your eye, you know that you’re the true winner.

I kind of hate this, but it’s pretty funny so it’s what you get, and I would usually put a read more thingy on longer docs like these but I can’t figure out how you do it on mobile

[cheriladycl01]

Podcast of our life - Esteban Ocon x ChineseOlympicFootballer! Reader

Plot: You have won Olympic Medals, play Football in the Chinese Women’s Team but also are in the Premier League playing for Chelsea Football Club… you are a worldwide legend. So what’s the story of how you met your French F1 driving boyfriend!

“Tonight we have a very special guest, one of the most iconic athletes of her time and known world wide it’s Y/N Y/L/N” the interviewer says as you come into the platform in a gorgeous blue dress, you look out into the crowd spying Esteban your boyfriend.

“Hello hello! 你好” you say politely bowing to the crowd with your hands together and then shaking hands with the interviewer.

“Woah you just look incredible tonight Y/N don’t you think so ladies and gentlemen?” She asks smiling into the crowd cheers and wolf whistles heard throughout the crowd making you smile and laugh happy to have fans in the building with you.

“So Y/N let’s first talk about just how incredible your achievements have been. You stared out as playing for a local team in China before ending up on their national team playing in the FIFA Women’s World Cup as one of their youngest players, coming third in your first year and winning the championship with your team in your second, before competing in the Olympics on that football team only 2 years later, and bringing home gold for you team. And now your in your second year of playing for Chelsea FC! How do you feel after all this?” She asks and you smile a little.

“Tired” you announce and a chorus of laughs are heard through the studio.

“Ah yes, i can imagine with all the travelling” she grins and you nod.

“No honestly I’m so thankful and grateful for everything that all of my friends family and fans have all helped me along in my career and how much I’ve achieved in such a short period of time. I want to continue improving and making everyone proud so it doesn’t just end here!” You grin, you were always so thankful for everyone around you that made your career what it was.

“Yeah I think most athletes we interview always talk about the incredible support system they have around them that gives them that mental drive and motivation to do better! What in your opinion gives you your biggest motivation before games and when things get that little bit more tough?” She asks and once again you smile.

“Yeah it’s a mix honestly as much as I love my family and friends they have their own lives and can’t always be there, some of my darkest caverns were ones that I pulled myself out of but mostly the fans and my family that help me when it comes to wanting to do my very best” you admit and the crowd awes at your reasoning.

“Ah yes, your very close with your dad specifically aren’t you. He’s the reason you got into football in the first place” she smiles.

“Yeah I mean he is my inspiration when it comes to football and how I do! He took me to my first game and taught me how to kick a ball! I just can’t imagine I’d be where I am without him helping me! But yeah, when he’s not around motivation is hard” you tell her.

“So other than motivation I can imagine it being a huge struggle like you said with handle closest to you not being there all the time. Especially your athlete boyfriend Esteban Ocon who folks is in the room with us today” she says and the camera breaks to pan over to him in the crowd. “Who travels around the world to 24 different global locations how - how does that even work with you both so busy?” She pries but you don’t mind as you and Esteban were genuinely quite open with your relationship.

“We make it work, any chance I can go to a race i go no matter how tired or jet lagged I am I still go and he will do as much as he can to come to my matches … you know that’s actually how we met at a football match” you grin reminiscing about the time you met him.

“Dad come on, we should get to the stadium!” You exclaimed exited to finally go to a PSG game while you guys were in Paris.

“Come on we’ve got loads of time, the game doesn’t start for an hour” he chuckles as you try pull on his hand, looking more like a toddler than a 21 year old.

“But the tour, I don’t want to miss it! Please can we get there now?” You ask with a face that you knew your father couldn’t say no too.

“Fine let’s go!” He sighs with a teasing smile, you guys walk towards the stadium, once you get there a few people who were football fans notice you and politely ask for signatures and pictures.

More and more people come over, questioning whether you’ll be going to the game. You are answering most questions until a new gaggle of people were ahead, and it looked like a similar situation people thrusting paper into a man’s hands who was wearing sunglasses despite the cloudy Parisian afternoon.

People who were talking to you took quick notice of the man ahead, and people with him started to take notice of you until the two groups sort of merged into one until you were back to back signing stuff with the random man.

Eventually security came and managed to get the two of you away from the crowds to keep everything moving on quickly.

“Hello!” You’d smiled at the man and he nodded and smiled back.

“You er ever had that before?” You ask and he pushed his sunglasses up finally to get a good look at you.

“Yeah, pretty often actually” he laughs.

“What, er what do you do?” You’d asked shyly not knowing who he was.

“I’m a formula one driver? And your that new hot shot footballer right?” He asked narrowing his eyes.

“And yeah, we watched the game together and the rest is history. He is without a doubt the love of my life!” You grinned looking out to him and his radiant smile.

y/user

Liked by lj10, estebanocon, chelseafcw and others

y/user: Everything in life is blue 💙🦋🈳 Another season with my amazing girls in Chelsea and another year in Alpine for Este 👌🏼🫶🏼

Tagged 4 People

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fan1: best footballer period 🥰

estebanocon: so proud of you! Amazing season! You are my star ⭐️

-> y/user: I’m proud of everything you’ve done too despite the tough year! I love you 💙

lj10: Cant wait for this season! Gonna smash it again 🤞🏻but why would you use that picture of me 🥲

-> y/user: HELL YEAH! Come on you blues 🦋💙

fan2: COME ON YOU BLUES 🫶🏼

chelseafcw: so excited to have you on the team for another year 💙

Instagram Story Caption:

Celebrating our two year date at the place we first met @ psg :) Paris really is the city of love ❤️

[talkingwoso]

Aitana Goatmatí’s year:

🏆World Cup

🏆Champions League

🏆Liga F

🏆 Spanish SuperCup

🏆 World Cup Golden Ball

🏆 Ballon d’Or

🏆 UEFA Player of the Year

🏆FIFA The Best

🏆 IFFHS Women’s World Best Player

🏆 Laureus World Sportswomen of the year

[httpsdana]

𝐔𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬~𝐀 𝐅𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐧 𝐓𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐢 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐩𝐭 𝟏

summary: Barça players and talented footballers. Souls meet and sparks fly. But there's always a twist when it comes to love isn't there?

pairing: Ferran Torres x Gonzalez!Reader

warnings: cursing, slight age gap, angst

next part

Football runs in the family they say. Pedri Gonzalez was one of the new star boys of this generation. No one cares about his family or past, they just acknowledge the present.

A few knew that he had a sister. She called herself 'the forgotten child'. No one knew that she was a barça femeni player. Because simply no one cares about women's football.

The talent she had only bloomed in La Masia. The football dream academy. She was there alongside many other ladies that are well known. Aitana Bonmati and Salma Paralluelo were two of the players she played with when she was younger, but they got the chance to play for the first team before her, which only motivated her to push herself more, now reserving a spot in the starting line up of the women's team.

So there she was now, with the most g/a in Liga F, and the star of her team. Still no one knew her blood relations with the star boy Pedri, as she preferred to have her own name, rather than be hidden in the shadows of her twin.

What she didn't know was that she had some admirers from the men's team. She knew all of the players of course, unlike others she watched men's football and followed the barça men team. She admired the youngsters, got inspired by the experts, and found motivations in players who have seemed to come back from the death. The Shark Ferran Torres.

The number 7 has caught her attention after seeing the change in his mentality from the previous season to the current one. He seemed more stable and determined to prove others wrong, just like she did.

She didn't know that he secretly praised her, and watched her highlights through out the years. He began watching the women's team's matches because of her. He even learned some stuff from her, making him appreciate her even more, without anyone knowing.

No one needed to know that half the reason behind his change of mentality, was a 20 year old lady who played football and inspired him more than anyone else could.

He didn't know she was the twin of his best friend. Which is what causes the twist in their futures.

•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•

"y/n you are the star of your team, people knowing about you being my twin now isn't gonna change anything" Pedri said, annoyed by the thoughts his sister had.

"who told you so Pedro? I prefer to stay like this than get more attention for being your sister" she rolled her eyes and flopped on the couch next to Fernando, who seemed unbothered while he watched a movie and ate some popcorn.

"god I wanna know who put these thoughts in your head. I miss going out with you" he let out a sigh, sitting next to her on the couch

y/n shook her head and focused on the movie that was being played.

"how about you meet my best friends? you literally don't have any social skills or friends" he complained making her roll her eyes

"Aita is my friend" she shrugged, knowing this was partially a lie. they were just teammates, not the type to go out on free days

"yeah and Ronaldo is better than Messi. you know she's not your friend" he rolled his eyes

"why are you so bothered anyways?" she asked, stealing some popcorn from Fer, making him hit her hand.

"you may not notice it now, but this will slowly destroy your mental health later on. you should go out and meet some new people. look beyond football and enjoy your free days" Pedri said.

He was slowly getting in her head, and she knew he was right. She let out a sigh and nodded her head.

"I'll think about it. how about I beat your ass in fifa now?" she smirked, making him gasp jokily.

"yeah as if you can do that" he scoffed, turning Fer's movie off to turn his PS5

"hey what the fuck?" Fernando said, making them laugh. Fer shook his head and glanced on his phone before getting up.

"mom texted she needs some help at home, I'm gonna go now" he said, taking his stuff and walking out of Pedri's apartment.

•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•

"haha! that's 3-1 to me. you're such a loser" y/n slapped the back of Pedri's head, making him glare at her

"whatever I let you win anyways" he shrugged, making her laugh

they were interrupted by a knock on the door of the apartment. y/n looked at Pedri, who shrugged and got up to open the door.

She turned off the PS5 and put the movie back on, before Pedri walked awkwardly to the room. y/n stood up confused, before someone appeared behind Pedri.

"y/n, this Ferran. Ferran, y/n..my sister"

[putellasawfc]

arsenal admin needs to do better imo, they’re so quick to post the girl’s achievements when it comes to the more ‘popular’ players like beth, leah, alessia, katie, etc. but the other girls are more like an afterthought to them. when alessia got a place in fifa’s best 11 they posted about it straight away, but when lia won her swiss women’s national team player of the year award they didn’t post about it until a whole day later. same with laia codina, no mention of her winning the nation’s league until now and i genuinely believe it’s because people on twitter were berating them for it. they need to do better because it’s so unfair.

[therealgbaby]

Happy 30th birthday to the talented Alexia Putellas.

The x2 Ballon d’Or-winner holds the record for being Spain's most successful female player in history. She has won 2 FIFA The Best, 2 UEFA Women’s Player of the Year, 2 Champions League trophies, 7 Leagues and is currently World Champion with Spain.

{Pop Base coded}

[sccpmccabe]

It took me a while but I finally got a video with good video quality (at some point the audio gets shit, but that's what I managed to find) of the speech Marta gave when receiving the honor during the FIFA The Best awards ceremony today.

(I did my best to translate, but it's worth remembering that my first language is Portuguese (BR) and I don't usually speak English that often, so the text/speech may contain some errors)

"I'm sorry, but I'm going to speak in Portuguese because I want you to understand what I want to say at this moment".

"It's always difficult to go on that stage and not get emotional. I was fortunate enough to receive the best player award a few times and I think it's much easier (to receive this award) because you'll base yourself on what you did throughout the year and thank your teammates, thank everyone staff, family, but this (the tribute) is, without a doubt, much more special, it's difficult to even find words, but I want that, just as I see in this tribute, I want all women to also be able to see a promising future where it is not only directed towards football, sport, but any activity because what we seek daily through what God destined us to do is to seek to make the world a better place for everyone without distinction. It's about seeking equality, respect and I leave this message here for all those who have the power to transmit this message through what you do: do it, do it because the next generations will thank you. They will thank a Ronaldo (R9), a Zagallo, they will thank a Pelé [...] They will thank Jenni (Hermoso), who I had the pleasure of playing with in 2013 and who has evolved so much and has been doing her job on and off the field as a citizen of the world. So I want to thank FIFA and the entire football community for the honor that I am receiving in life and still in activity and I want to say that this, without a doubt, is a great motivation for us to continue seeking to evolve, because there is always the to learn and in a year of the Olympics (it inspires me to) who knows, maybe not play another one. After that I'll have the answers as to whether I'm going to continue or not, but for now, thank you very much. I'm very happy, my heart is just grateful".

[didalexiabreakupwitholgaisback]

I think - similar to what you were saying about the long form content - Barça could benefit from doing something like the 'we are Chelsea' podcast which (credit to them) I think Chelsea does well and its a nice format - they talk to more than one player at a time so less pressure and its more of a conversation than an interview. I know there are a few good Barça player interviews floating around already but if they are posted by the main account they're more likely to have good translations etc etc.

Obvs this is NOT a requirement and no one is entitled to someone else's personal space but I agree that as a fan of something it's nice to see different personalities and it doesn't have to be cheesy and embarrassing. Barça already does some fun little videos but it would be nice to see some more of them just because I'm greedy :(

how much more greedy do we need to be?! 😅 we have the ballon d'or winners from the last 4 years and all their promo (not to mention all the content from fifa the best and the other awards), and all the content related to being reigning champions league winners 😮‍💨. as for chelsea, given their attendances and meh fan engagement, they need all the help they can get...😂

but barça does not have that problem. the barça fanbase has been so passionate and loyal for years. this is the same fanbase that has set the worldwide records for attendance and mass mobilisation for champions league finals, despite the poor economy in spain.

we *definitely* don't need to pander to bandwagon fans who make up almost all of the complaining twitter users from yesterday. 🙄

so instead of copying what another team is doing (i have zero desire to see pere and rafel doing a dance or singing a song😬), i would rather we do more of what we are already doing. look at how much great content we got yesterday from fundació barça. it didn't feel forced or fake.

as for new content, we have the new "face to face" series. the first episode had irene paredes and iñigo martínez. so we are incorporating both the men and women's teams, which is great! and let's not forget the "dare to play" series that features interviews with family members and the early years coaches of players like patri, cata, and aitana this season 😮‍💨

finally, keep in mind that barça is having financial difficulties. there's no getting around that. they cut barça tv altogether, which was responsible for a lot of good content over many, many years when a lot of women's teams didn't even have their own social media accounts. we are lucky that carla was rehired at all. 😬 so again, i'd rather barça focus their efforts on good quality content over quantity.

at the end of the day: barça is unique. we are the best fandom. we have strong values, and we don't need to try and copy other teams. 🙏 som-hi! 💙 ❤️ 

[xillionart]

Noa/Fem!Ego.

At Blue Lock's very beginning, Ego talked about the Japanese national character being the reason why Japan couldn't win a World Cup. But in fact... Japanese women's football team had already won the World Cup as early as 2011? 

I love, love drawing sex swap (for which I repent), but in any AU I must maintain the core of a character despite the changes to worldbuilding and/or their background story — despite this core is shaped exactly by their background story. What is Ego's core? A ghost obsessed with/possessed by the world's best striker. How can I preserve his/her obsession with sex swapping? Ironically enough, the best way I can think of to keep Ego’s core is to remove him/her position as “Noa’s rival, teammate, and brother-in-arm”.

More references undercut:

I based Jinka’s career on the following two players:

Saki Kumagai (熊谷紗希), the captain of the Japanese women's football team, a defensive midfielder who plays for Bayern Munich Women's Team and has just transferred to Roma this summer. She scored the winning penalty for Japan in the 2011 World Cup. She also has seven French league titles and five European Cups to her name.

Homare Sawa (澤穂希), the former captain of the Japanese team in 2011, a striker. She scored a last-minute equalizer in extra time in the final, ultimately leading Japan to win the game through a penalty shootout. She won the Golden Ball Award as the tournament's best player and the Golden Boot Award as the tournament's top scorer. Later that year, she was named the 2011 FIFA Women's World Player of the Year, the first Asian to win a major end-of-year individual award (regardless of gender). 

The appearance and name of the captain of Bastard Munich Women's Team is based on Karin Danner, the legendary manager who laid down the foundation of Bayern Munich Women’s Team.

The characters for Jinka (甚佳) means "Excellent". I don't know Japanese, but I’d like to retain the way characters is written for "Jin" (even it is regarded as masculine) and the rhyme of his name. I hope this name makes sense.

The flashback scene at the end is based on Bayern Munich men’s and women’s teams’ double championship party in 2023 (as both won the Bundesliga). I absolutely adore their khaki vests and white shirts. Stunning.

[cypher2]

2023 Women's World Cup records

In addition to breaking numerous worldwide social media and viewing records, the 2023 Women's World Cup set and broke a number of unique tournament records as well. The players and teams that participated in this WWC should all feel extremely proud for the history they have made. Their performances continue to show the world that these athletes are capable of so much more than they are ever fully recognized for.

First team from their nation to qualify for a men’s or women’s senior FIFA tournament: Vietnam WNT 8 nations had their debuts for first time appearing in a FIFA women’s World Cup: Haiti, Portugal, Zambia, Vietnam, The Philippines, Republic of Ireland, Morocco, and Panama. Canadian midfielder Quinn starts for Canada and becomes the first non-binary athlete to play at a FIFA World Cup.

Christine Sinclair (Canada) and Marta (Brazil) become the 3rd and 4th players in history to appear in 6 World Cup competitions men or women, with Homare Sawa (Japan) and Onome Zeno (Nigeria) being the other two. The player with the record for most world cup appearances in history remains Brazil’s Formiga, the only player to compete in 7 world cups (men or women).

Kristine Lilly still holds the record for most WC appearances by men or women with 30 games played - a record set and held since 2007. Followed by Formiga with 27 as of 2019 and Lionel Messi with 26 as of 2022. Brazil’s Marta still holds the all time leading record for most goals scored across all World Cup competitions with 17 goals in 23 appearances across 6 tournaments.

Zambia’s Lushomo Mweemba scores the fastest goal of this year’s tournament in group stage at 2min 11 sec, also marking Zambia’s first ever world cup goal in their debut. The fastest goal in a FIFA Women’s World Cup has stood for over 30 years - it remains the goal scored by Lena Videkull of Sweden, who scored after just 30 seconds against Japan in the inaugural 1991 tournament. Zambia’s Barbra Banda scores the 1000th goal in WWC history. Nouhaila Benzina of Morocco becomes the first Women’s World Cup player to wear a hijab.

Ary Borges of Brazil scores a hat trick in her WWC debut and the first hat trick of the tournament. First Caribbean nation to reach the round of 16 in WWC history - Jamaica First Arab nation to qualify for a WWC and reach the round of 16 in WWC history - Morocco Of the eight debutants, Morocco was the only one to advance to the round of 16. Two teams reached the round of 16 having conceded no goals so far in the tournament- Japan and Jamaica.

First time four African nations have been represented at a WWC with three of them qualifying for the knock out stage at this years competition - South Africa, Morocco, and Nigeria. 3 of the 4 African nations appearing in this year’s WWC all finished 2nd in their groups (Morocco, South Africa, and Nigeria). The US suffered its earliest elimination in WWC history, getting knocked out in the round of 16. The U.S. has never finished below 3rd place in all previous editions of the competition. Sweden’s Zećira Mušović sets a new record for most saves in any WWC 2023 game with 11 saves vs the US in the round of 16.

First manager to lead two different nations to a World Cup final (Netherlands and England)- Sarina Wiegman First goalkeeper to take and convert a PK in a WWC penalty shootout - Alyssa Naeher

Golden ball (best overall player of the tournament) - Aitana Bonmatí Silver ball - Jenni Hermoso Bronze ball - Amanda Ilestedt Golden boot (most goals scored in the tournament) - Hinata Miyazawa (5 goals) Silver boot - Kadidiatou Diani Bronze boot - Alexandra Popp Golden glove (best goalkeeper of the tournament) - Mary Earps

FIFA young player award (best player of the tournament under 21 years old) - Salma Paralluelo FIFA fair play award (team with best record of fair play during the tournament) - Japan Best mascot of the tournament (unofficial) - Waru Longest penalty shootout in World Cup history (20 penalties taken) - Australia vs France quarter final

The 2023 competition was hosted by Australia and New Zealand, making it the first edition to be held in the Southern Hemisphere, the first Women's World Cup to be hosted by two countries, and the first FIFA senior competition for either men or women to be held across two confederations (Asia and Oceanic).

First edition of the women’s tournament to feature an expansion to 32 teams and 64 matches, and largest women’s sporting event in history with 32 teams and 736 players. Only team to play all matches (group stage + knockout) undefeated with a 6-0-0 record - England All 4 previous winner nations (US, Germany, Norway, and Japan) were eliminated before the semifinal stage, marking the first time this has happened in the competition’s history.

For the first time in its 32 year and 9 tournament history, the WWC has a new champion (Spain) and new runner up (England) in 2023, with both nations never having made it to the final stage before. Only the 2nd nation in history to win both a men’s and women’s World Cup - Spain Top scoring country at the 2023 WWC - Spain with 18 goals First time a senior English football team has made it to a WC final in 6 decades - England WNT

First time advancing past quarterfinals in their WWC history and first host nation to advance to semifinals in 20 years - Australia placed 4th place for best in all 8 WWC competitions they’ve participated in and broke attendance records through all stages of the tournament, with an overall stadium attendance across all matches at 1.978 million. More than 1.5 million tickets were sold for the WWC, surpassing the entire tournament’s projected target in the first 5 days alone.

Two attendance records were broken for both host nations on day one of the WWC - largest crowd ever for a men’s or women’s football game in New Zealand (42,137) and largest crowd ever for a women’s football game in Australia (75,784).

Brazil's opening match v Panama was simulcast live on TV Globo and SporTV, delivering a combined audience of 13.9 million viewers - higher than any audience in the territory during the 2007, 2011, and 2015 WWC. China v England produced the highest audience for a single match, reaching 53.9 million viewers, becoming the highest in any global market so far. 17.15 million people tuned into the Australia v England semifinal cumulatively across Channel 7, Optus Sport, venues, and live-sites, comprising approx 64% of the entire Australian population - the biggest television event not just in any sport in the country, but in Australia’s television history.

The record for highest single match attendance still remains the 1999 WWC final between the US and China with 90,185 in attendance - a number that hasn’t been reached since the men’s tournament at the 1994 WC final between Italy and Brazil at 94,194.

The largest 2023 attendances were at Stadium Australia in Sydney, which saw four capacity-crowd fixtures, including Australia's opening win over Republic of Ireland and the final between Spain and England. The crowd of 75,784 was a record home audience for a women's football match in Australia and the third largest individual crowd attendance in Women's World Cup history. Over 50% of all matches had near sell out or at stadium capacity with a total of 1,977,824 fans in attendance at the 64 games in total, setting a new record for highest overall attendance in Women’s World Cup history across all 9 editions of the tournament. Highest grossing Women’s World Cup in history with a revenue of over half a billion dollars ($570 million), surpassing the projected revenue estimate by $100 million.

[morganablenewsmedia]

FIFA Awards: Vinicius Jr Claims Best Men's Player

FIFA Awards: Vinicius Jr claims best men’s player as Aitana Bonmati ‘named best women’s player’ Following sterling and stellar performances over the years, the Brazilian prodigy has finally been honoured. It takes resilience, ruggedness and die-hard desires for any performer to be recognised at the global level. Two months ago, many appeared to question Rodri being awarded the Ballon d’Or at the…

[air-rising]

‘Irreplaceable’: meet the Matildas’ other bonafide superstar

Ellie Carpenter, one of the world’s best footballers, was playing in the biggest game of her career when her knee gave way. One year on she’s chasing an even bigger prize – a home World Cup.

It’s the biggest game of her life but Ellie Carpenter is being carried off on a ­stretcher. The replay is a sickening sight, causing groans among the 32,000-strong crowd. Her left knee has buckled beneath her, leaving the 22-year-old thumping the ground in agony. Her Women’s Champions League final is over and maybe so much more.

Waves of pain from her ruptured ACL make it hard for the young Australian to think clearly as she is lifted off the field after only 13 minutes playing for her club Lyon against Barcelona in Turin on May 21 last year. And yet, at this moment, she is focusing harder than she has ever thought before. The girl from Cowra, the former child prodigy of Australian soccer, wipes the tears from her eyes and stares straight up at the sky as if in a trance.

“Count,” she tells herself as her ­stretcher makes its way out of the ­stadium to the applause of the sympathetic crowd. “Count the months.”

“I was thinking, ‘Oh shit, what month is it?’ Carpenter recalls. “It’s usually a 12-month recovery [from an ACL injury] and I needed to count the months until I could play again. So in my head I was going like ‘June, July, August’ and then I’m like ‘YES, YES, YES, I’ll make it. I’ll recover in time for our World Cup.”

-

Almost exactly 12 months later Carpenter, now 23, bounces into a cafe in central Lyon, France, with her blonde hair in a bun, wearing a T-shirt and shorts and a grin on her face. It’s a wet spring day, but the sun is rising again for Carpenter after a horror year. She is back on the field, playing again for Olympique Lyonnais, the best women’s team in the world. Off the field, she is happy and in love. She has bought a house just outside Lyon with her ­partner and teammate, Danielle van de Donk, one of the best footballers on the planet, who also plays for the Netherlands national team. 

If the rapid-fire ticket sales are any guide, Carpenter may be underestimating the reception that awaits her and the Matildas. 

The World Cup, to run from July 20 to August 20, jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand, will see an estimated 83,000 watch Australia’s opening match against Ireland at Sydney’s Accor Stadium – more than double the Matildas’ previous highest attendance of 36,000. The opening match was moved from the 42,500-seat Sydney Football Stadium to the 83,000-seat Stadium Australia (known as Accor Stadium for sponsorship purposes) to meet the surging demand for tickets. At least 1.5 million people are expected to attend the games in Australia and New Zealand with an estimated worldwide audience of two billion. FIFA predicts the World Cup will encourage up to 400,000 girls to take up soccer in Australia.

“It’s crazy now, women’s football,” says ­Carpenter. “I’ve seen it go from here to here,” she says, moving her hands towards the sky.

Marketing surveys show the Matildas have overtaken the men’s Wallabies rugby union team in popularity, something that would once have seemed unthinkable for a team that only formed in 1978 and for years had to play on substandard ovals. The small crowds that came to watch them play in those days were mostly family and friends. 

“It’s incredible to see where this team has come from to be one of our biggest sporting brands … so many players have paved the way for this moment,” says Heather Garriock, who played 130 games for the Matildas between 1999 and 2011.

Ellie Carpenter's FIFA World Cup mission

For years Matildas players were paid a pittance, having to hold down second jobs while playing for the national team. In the early days one player recalled how a teammate called the coach before an international match to say she would be late because her shift at Woolies didn’t finish until 5.30pm. In the lead-up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the Matildas were so desperate to secure sponsorship and public support that 12 of them posed naked for a calendar to get attention. Fast-forward to today and the Matildas are a household name, and Kerr is ­arguably the most recognisable Australian sports star in the world. In May, wearing a sharp black suit, she carried the Australian flag into Westminster Abbey for the coronation of King Charles III.

But it will take more than Kerr’s soccer ­royalty for the Matildas to realise their dream of winning a home World Cup.

-

On a cold spring evening in London on the eve of the coronation, Kerr is playing to script, slamming the winning goal for her team Chelsea against Liverpool with just minutes to go. As she leaves the ground I ask her what she thinks about having Carpenter back with the Matildas for the World Cup. “Ellie is one of the best players in the world,” says Kerr, who ­described Carpenter as “irreplaceable” when she injured her ACL last year. “We’ve missed her and she’s a great personality to have on the team … I’m feeling good, I’m feeling excited [about the World Cup].”

A few days later, Carpenter is sprinting up the right wing, weaving the ball around her teammates during morning training near the Parc Olympique Lyonnais stadium on the outskirts of Lyon. It is just over two months since she made her comeback from her injury and the previous weekend she was one of the team’s best players in their 3-0 win over Dijon.

She calls out to her teammates in French and jokes with them in French, but if she makes a mistake on the field, the word “shit” rings out across the ground in an Aussie twang.

Her bilingual world in Lyon, a French foodie capital crammed with UNESCO World Heritage sites, is a reminder of just how many lives Carpenter has squeezed into her 23 years. “It all started here,” she says, pointing to a tattoo on her ankle that shows the outline of Cowra, her hometown of 12,500 people in the Central West of NSW. “It’s like one main street, two sets of traffic lights, a place where we knew everyone and everyone knew the Carpenters.”

Looking back, Carpenter’s unlikely rise from the streets of Cowra to international soccer star was both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because she lived the real-life sporting fairy-tale. This was the tale in which a determined young country girl becomes a prodigy of the game, shattering every barrier in her path to find herself playing for Australia at the age of just 15 and then at the age of 16 at the 2016 Rio Olympics, the youngest ever female footballer in the world to compete in an Olympics.

The curse was that she was so good, so early, that she was a kid playing among adults, being thrust into the spotlight ahead of her time, ­before she was ready and before she had time to grow up. “I hated it sometimes,” she says. “I was always the youngest. People would say, oh, you’re the youngest ever Olympian or you’re the youngest ever to score a goal, the youngest this, the youngest that. I was playing with ­people who were 10 or 15 years older than me and you had to mature very quickly. It was hard with the pressure, the spotlight, the critics … I wasn’t prepared for that at the time.

“I’ve been in the public eye since I was 15 and now people think I’m 30 but I’m still just 23, one of the youngest in the team.” 

-

Belinda Carpenter still scratches her head about how her daughter fell in love with soccer. “She was highly energetic, she never sat still but she did all sports – a bit of athletics, AFL, soccer, cricket, even triathlon, cheerleading and trapeze,” she says. Belinda and her then husband Scott, who were Physical Education teachers in Cowra, encouraged Carpenter and her older brother Jeremy to dabble in any activity that took their fancy. “Ellie also did ballet, so she would play ­football in the morning and then go to ballet with muddy knees under those pink stockings,” Belinda recalls. 

“I think I always knew I would be a sportsperson, because ever since I could walk I was running,” says Carpenter. “I think I could have done any sport really because I was also good at swimming and athletics. I was a tomboy. I didn’t really have a normal childhood. I never went to parties like other girls, I just wanted to play sports.”

She played soccer from an early age but her path as a serious player began by accident when, at the age of about seven, she watched her brother Jeremy train with the NSW country soccer team. “I was just on the sidelines waiting for him, juggling the ball on my own, when the coach came up and said that I could join their next session. I was the only girl and the boys were much older than me. I don’t ­remember this but apparently I was, like, really good, smashing all the boys.”

Belinda and Scott decided to give both Ellie and Jeremy the chance to compete in competitions across the state. This required a brutal schedule of long drives for training and games. “Honestly I can’t believe they did that for me,” Carpenter says. “From Cowra we used to drive to Canberra every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, which was more than two hours there and back, and then sometimes we would play in Sydney which was four hours there and back on the same day. I would spend so much time in the car, doing my homework or making up quizzes and things just to pass the time.”

By the time Carpenter was 12, it was clear that she had a natural talent that could no longer be nurtured from Cowra. So Belinda quit her job and moved with both the children to Sydney so they could attend Westfield Sports High School in Sydney’s west, which had a specialist sports program.

It was a big school in a big city, a culture shock for a country girl. “It was a huge change, I became this small fish in a big sea,” she says. Not long afterwards, her parents divorced, a time which she describes as difficult and sad.

The following year, aged 13, ­Carpenter went to watch the Matildas play in Sydney. “I think there was a maximum of 1000 people there but I watched the national team play and I was like, ‘Oh, sick, I want to be that.’ Then two years later, I was on that team. It was crazy.”

Carpenter’s precocious talent turned heads in the soccer world at that time, and things ­unfolded quickly. She broke into the “Mini-­Matildas” under-17 team at the age of 14, and when she turned 15 signed her first professional contract with the then W-League club Western Sydney Wanderers. The coach was so impressed with her that she didn’t even need to trial for the team.

Carpenter’s ambition was such that although she began her career as a midfielder, she volunteered to be a defender when the Mini-Matildas said they needed defenders only because she didn’t want to be cut from the squad. “I was like, I want to be in the team so I will play wherever.”

In March 2016, when she was still just 15, Carpenter made her debut for the senior Matildas, playing in a 9-0 victory over Vietnam. 

Not long afterwards, she was playing for Australia in the Rio Olympics, the first of the string of “youngest ever” firsts that she would soon tire of. “Obviously I was so young – I think I was the youngest in that team by five years,” she recalls. “So I guess I was kind of on my own. Some players were 30 years old and some of them were a bit like, ‘Who is this 15-year-old who has come into the team?’ and some people don’t want you there because you might take their spot. So some didn’t like me being there, but you’ve just gotta keep going.”

After the Rio Olympics, Heather Garriock, who was then coaching, says she noticed that the 16-year-old Carpenter was struggling. “I could see that she wasn’t doing well with the massive comedown after the hype of the ­Olympic Games. So, you know, I just put my arm around her – and since then I’ve always put my arm around her and taken her under my wing. She just wanted to be the best and to get better every day.

“She is so driven to win and yet she’s got such a nice nature, a very humble kind of girl who will always give you her time.”

Carpenter says she was forced to grow up quickly, but with the help of people like ­Garriock she eventually found her rhythm and adapted to the ever-growing public glare of being a Matilda. “I think it took me a couple of years, until I was about 17, to come out as Ellie,” she says.

In Year 10 Carpenter dropped out of school to pursue her dream of being a full-time ­footballer. “She wasn’t at school very much anyway,” says Belinda of her daughter’s busy soccer schedule. “I just told her, ‘Go do it, ­because if it fails and you don’t get to where you want to go in soccer, we will go back and figure out the education route’.”

When Carpenter was 17 she was pursued by the US National Women’s Soccer League team Portland Thorns, in Oregon on the US west coast. She signed with them but, in those days, women were not allowed to play until they turned 18. The club was so keen for her to play that she signed a contract literally on her 18th birthday, and played the following week, racking up yet another series of “youngest evers”. “That’s why I was the youngest ever player and the youngest ever person to score a goal in the NWSL at that stage,” she says.

-

Carpenter says life in the US was a shock ­“because it was so different to Australia”. ­Belinda recalls that her daughter would often ­FaceTime her during dinner just to have a ­companion to speak with. “Until she found her feet I would often hang out with her on the phone while she was having dinner at a restaurant or something when she didn’t ­really know anybody.

“Even though Ellie is really outgoing, with a wicked sense of humour, I think she is also a bit guarded about who she lets in.”

Even so, Carpenter says she enjoyed her two years in Portland where she regularly played in front of crowds of 20,000. By this stage she had become a fixture of the Matildas team, playing in the 2019 World Cup in France where they made it to the round of 16 and then the 2020 Tokyo Olympics where the Matildas made it to the semi-finals.

By the time she turned 20, Carpenter was being pursued by the strongest women’s team in the world, Olympique Lyonnais. She recalls the moment she learned that Lyon wanted to recruit her. “I was like, ‘Are you serious?’ It was Lyon and I was like, ‘Are you sure they want me?’ I mean, if Lyon calls, you go to them ­wherever you are because they are the best in the world.” This is no exaggeration – the team has won eight Champions League finals in the past 12 years, including five in a row between 2015 and 2020. 

But Carpenter’s arrival in 2020 wasn’t so easy. “It was the time of the Covid pandemic so the city was shut. I didn’t know anyone, and I didn’t know French,” she says. So she began her life anew yet again, throwing herself into French lessons and making friends at her new club. She impressed local fans by trying to speak French at press conferences, albeit with an Aussie twang. She also fell in love with Lyon itself. “I love it, it’s beautiful – not as nice as ­Sydney, but it’s still beautiful.” As soon as she arrived, she also saw why her new team kept winning championships. The ­fitness, the training, the skills were next-level, even for Carpenter. “She called me up and said, ‘Um, Mum, these players are really, really good’,” recalls Belinda. Initially she found it hard to break into her new team, and she won her first European Championship with Lyon in 2020 without taking to the field when she was on the team as an unused sub.

“I don’t think many people understand what it really takes to be a football player,” says Carpenter’s teammate and partner Danielle van de Donk. “You win trophies and everyone thinks it is a high but no one really knows about the lows.” Van de Donk, who has been going out with Carpenter for about two years, says she has the rare ability to lift the team’s morale ­single-handedly. “She is the most energetic person I know, she is very, very positive, and off the pitch she just brings a different kind of energy to the room – even when she was injured the coaches were saying to her, ‘Bring your energy to the team, we need it’,” says van de Donk. “She is already a star but she is just going to get bigger and bigger. She is only 23.”

Van de Donk says she’s attracted to ­Carpenter because they are “similar people in life”, adding: “It’s kind of wild, she is from ­Australia, I’m from the Netherlands and we are buying a house in Lyon – it’s very cool.’’

After that tricky start at Lyon, Carpenter ­became a regular in the team – until the 13-minute mark of last year’s Champions League final. “It was just sickening to watch her go down,” recalls Belinda, who was watching the game live in the middle of the night from her home in Wamberal on the NSW Central Coast. “I actually said when I watched it, ‘She does not go down and she does not stay down’.”

-

Carpenter’s injury came in two parts. The first came when she was tackling an opponent near the corner post and her left knee twisted in the tackle. Carpenter hobbled off in obvious pain. But she was desperate to come back on, and tested the injured knee in front of the team’s medical staff. “I remember being on the sideline and they were testing me and I was like, ‘Is it strong, can you feel my ACL?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah I think it’s fine, so you want to go back on?’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s the Championship Final.’ So I ran back on and then I was like, ‘Oh, something’s not right’.”

Back in Wamberal, Belinda was horrified to see her daughter run back onto the pitch. “We were like, ‘No, no, no, don’t do it’,” she recalls.

Moments after returning to the field ­Carpenter moved to intercept a long pass. But as soon as she changed direction her knee gave way completely, severing her ACL and sending her to the ground.

Van de Donk, who was watching from the sidelines as a substitute, had torn her own ACL as a teenager and knew what lay ahead. “I saw her go down and instantly I knew it was wrong,” she recalls. “It was horrible to watch.” 

But once Carpenter counted the months and realised she could still potentially play in the World Cup in Australia, her mood lifted. Lyon won the match 3-1, giving Carpenter her second championship medal and yet another first as the only Australian to win two Champions League medals. After the match, despite having her injured leg in a splint, Carpenter joined her teammates in the celebrations on the field, swinging precariously on her crutches and then hopping on her one good leg as she held up the Champions League cup. She then flew back to Lyon with the team and continued the celebrations. “I was in so much pain, so I just took lots of painkillers but we went to a restaurant and partied in Lyon drinking champagne until 5am.”

The next morning Carpenter woke with a hangover to the bad news she had feared. She needed a full knee reconstruction and would be out of the game for up to a year. Recalls Belinda: “The first thing she said to me on the phone was, ‘I’m getting an operation, I’m going to get better and I’m going to play in the World Cup’. It was all about the World Cup.”

That has been Carpenter’s singular goal ever since. In those early months after her injury when she could not run, she followed her rehab plan like it was Holy Writ – long hours in the gym keeping the muscles working followed by swimming, physio, massage and the hardest task of all: patience.

“I had to learn a lot about patience because I am impatient,” she says. “When I finally was able to take my first jump again I actually cried with happiness.” At times Carpenter wondered whether she would be the same player when she returned, but mostly she says she kept her mental demons at bay.

“It was a long journey for her and she was a bit insecure in the beginning, she struggled for about three weeks,” says van de Donk. “But after that she was OK, she just powered through – and now I think she’s much stronger than she was.” Carpenter, for her part, puts a gloss on the whole saga, saying she believes it gave her a much-needed break from the game she’d been playing almost non-stop since she was a child.

Today, Carpenter’s football routine is very full-time. She goes into the club from around 9am to 4pm most days to do a mixture of ­training, gym, recovery and sponsorship work. Then she plays on weekends, often travelling. She works with a nutritionist and also a ­psychologist. She estimates she gets one day properly off each month. Such is the profile of the team in Lyon that she now gets recognised in the street, and after three years here she says she is now fluent in French.

“Ellie has always known the path that she wanted and she has just followed it ­completely. That is pretty incredible for a 23-year-old,” says former Matildas player ­Garriock. “She is already one of the world’s best players and her energy and leadership are crucial for the World Cup. She has achieved things at 23 that others wouldn’t achieve in their whole career. I have no doubt that she will be the captain of the Matildas in the ­future. She has all the leadership qualities and the big game experience.” 

Carpenter is now on the home stretch of her quest, hoping to stay in form and avoid ­injury until the World Cup begins in three weeks.

Although she loves playing for Lyon, she says there’s nothing like going home to play with the Matildas. “It’s like going back to your family,” she says with a grin. “We’ve all known each other for years. Everyone is so close. We can all laugh at ourselves and we look after each other. It’s such a good, strong group. I don’t know how to ­explain it but I have a special passion when I play for the Matildas, it’s unique. For me, this World Cup is the top of the top, it’s probably the best thing I will ever experience.”

So how far can Carpenter and the Matildas go in this World Cup?

“We’ve never seen an Australian team like this,” says Garriock. “This core group of players like Ellie Carpenter, Sam Kerr and Caitlin Foord have played together in World Cups and big tournaments since they were 16 years old. They are in their prime and this is their moment. It is written for them.”

[redwineconversation]

Ellie Carpenter The Australian Article (June 30, 2023)

I'll be honest, I was - and to be frank, still am - in two minds about posting this, because I feel there are certain passages which invite nutcases to harass Carpenter and/or van de Donk, and I don't want to be responsible for enabling that kind of behavior.

On the flip side, there's also interesting facts / stories in here, and I think it provides an insight on a player that if we are still being honest with each other, we don't really know that much about.

Blah blah not associated with The Australian, if OL Comms wanted to chip in for my AC bill whom am I to say no to that, etc etc.

ELLIE CARPENTER THE AUSTRALIAN ARTICLE

It's the biggest game of her life but Ellie Carpenter is being carried off on a stretcher. The replay is a sickening sight, causing groans among the 32,000-strong crowd. Her left knee has buckled beneath her, leaving the 22-year-old thumping the ground in agony. Her Women's Champions League final is over and maybe so much more.

Waves of pain from her ruptured ACL make it hard for the young Australian to think clearly as she is lifted off the field after only 13 minutes playing for her club Lyon against Barcelona in Turin on May 21 last year. And yet, at this moment, she is focusing harder than she has ever thought possible. The girl from Cowra, the former child prodigy of Australian soccer, wipes the tears from her eyes and stares straight up at the sky as if in a trance.

"Count," she tells herself as her stretcher makes its way out of the stadium to the applause of the sympathetic crowd. "Count the months."

"I was thinking, 'Oh shit, what month is it?' Carpenter recalls. "It's usually a 12-month recovery [from an ACL injury] and I needed to count the months until I could play again. So in my head I was going like 'June, July, August' and then I'm like 'YES, YES, YES, I'll make it. I'll recover in time for our World Cup."

Almost exactly 12 months later Carpenter, now 23, bounces into a cafe in central Lyon, France, with her blonde hair in a bun, wearing a T-shirt and shorts and a grin on her face. It's a wet spring day, but the sun is shining again for Carpenter after a horror year. She is back on the field, playing again for Olympique Lyonnais, the best women's team in the world. Off the field, she is happy and in love. She has bought a house just outside Lyon with her partner and teammate, Danielle van de Donk, one of the best footballers on the planet, who also plays for the Netherlands national team.

Across the English Channel, the superstar captain of the Australian Matildas, Sam Kerr, is kicking goals and doing backflips for her club Chelsea. For Carpenter, who is as important to the Matildas' backline as Kerr is to the forward line, the stars are finally aligning for Australia's tilt at the biggest women's sporting event, the FIFA Women's World Cup. "I don't think I'll realise how big it's going to be until I walk out for that first game," she says, cradling a hot chocolate. "We have a team that could do something really special, we have great players who are in form and we are playing in front of our home crowds. It's gonna be massive. I think we have a really good chance but I don't want to jinx myself," she says, tapping the table for good luck.

If the rapid-fire ticket sales are any guide, Carpenter may be underestimating the reception that awaits her and the Matildas.

The World Cup, to run from July 20 to August 20, jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand, will see an estimated 83,000 watch Australia's opening match against Ireland at Sydney's Accor Stadium - more than double the Matildas' previous high attendance of 36,000. The opening match was moved from the 42,5000-seat Sydney Football Stadium to the 83,000-seat Stadium Australia (known as Accor Stadium for sponsorship purposes) to meet the surging demand for tickets. At least 15 million people are expected to attend the games in Australia and New Zealand with an estimated worldwide audience of two billion. FIFA predicts the World Cup will encourage up to 400,000 girls to take up soccer in Australia.

"It's crazy now, women's football," says Carpenter. "I've seen it go from here to here," she says, moving her hands towards the sky.

Marketing surveys show the Matildas have overtaken the men's Wallabies rugby union in popularity, something that would once have seemed unthinkable for a team that only formed in 1978 and for years had to play on substandard ovals. The small crowds that came to watch them play in those days were mostly family and friends.

"it's incredible to see where this team has come from to be one of our biggest sporting brands ... so many players have paved the way for this moment," says Heather Garriock, who played 130 games for the Matildas between 1999 and 2011.

For years Matildas players were paid a pittance, having to hold down second jobs while playing for the national team. In the early days one player recalled how a teammate called the coach before an international match to say she would be late because her shift at Woolies didn't finish until 530pm. In the lead-up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the Matildas were so desperate to secure sponsorship and public support that 12 of them posed naked for a calendar to get attention. Fast forward to today and the Matildas are a household name, and Kerr is arguably the most recognizable Australian sports star in the world. In May, wearing a sharp black suit, she carried the Australian flag into Westminster Abbey for the coronation of King Charles II.

But it will take more than Kerr's soccer royalty of the Matildas to realise their dream of winning a home World Cup.

On a cold spring evening in London on the eve of the coronation, Kerr is playing to script, slamming the winning goal for her team Chelsea against Liverpool with just minutes to go. As she leaves the ground I ask her what she thinks about having Carpenter back with the Matildas for the World Cup. "Ellie is one of the best players in the world," says Kerr, who described Carpenter as "irreplaceable" when she injured her ACL last year. "We've missed her and she's a great personality to have on the team... I'm feeling good, I'm feeling excited [about the World Cup]."

A few days later, Carpenter is sprinting up the right wing, weaving the ball around her teammates during morning training near the Parc Olympique Lyonnais stadium on the outskirts of Lyon. It is just over two months since she made her comeback from her injury and the previous weekend she was one of the team's best players in their 3-0 win over Dijon.

She calls out to her teammates in French and jokes with them in French, but if she makes a mistake on the field, the word "shit" rings out across the ground in an Aussie twang.

Her bilingual world in Lyon, a French foodie capital crammed with UNESCO World Heritage sites, is a reminder of just how many lives Carpenter has squeezed into her 23 years. "It all started here," she says, pointing to a tattoo on her ankle that shows the outline of Cowra, her hometown of 12,500 people in the Central West of NSW. "it's one main street, two sets of traffic lights, a place where we knew everyone and everyone knew the Carpenters."

Looking back, Carpenter's unlikely rise from the streets of Cowra to international soccer star was both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because she lived the real-life sporting fairy-tale. This was the tell in which a determined young country girl becomes a prodigy of the game, shattering every barrier in her path to find herself playing for Australia at the age of just 15 and then at the age of 16 at the 2016 Rio Olympics, the youngest ever female footballer in the world to compete in an Olympics.

The curse was that she was so good, so early, that she was a kid playing among adults, being thrust into the spotlight aead of her time, before she was ready and before she had the to grow up. "I hated it sometimes," she says. "I was always the youngest. People would say, oh, you're the youngest ever Olympian or you're the youngest ever to score a goal, the youngest thing, the youngest that. I was playing with people who were 10 or 15 years older than me and you had to mature very quickly. It was hard with the pressure, the spotlight, the critics... I wasn't prepared for that at the time."

"I've been in the public eye since I was 15 and now people think I'm 30 but I'm still just 23, one of the youngest on the team."

Belinda Carpenter still scratches her head about how her daughter fell in love with soccer. "She was highly energetic, she never sat still but she did all sports - a bit of athletic, AFL, soccer, cricket, even triathlon, cheerleading and trapeze," she says. Belinda and her then husband Scott, who were Physical Education teachers in Cowra, encouraged Carpenter and he older brother Jeremy to dabble in any activity that took their fancy. "Ellie also did ballet, so she would play football in the morning and then go to ballet with muddy knees under those pink stockings," Belinda recalls.

"I think I always knew I would be a sportsperson, because ever since I could walk I was running," says Carpenter. "I think I could have done any sport really because I was also good at swimming and athletics. I was a tomboy. I didn't really have a normal childhood. I never went to parties like other girls, I just wanted to play sports."

She played soccer from an early age but her path as a serious player began by accident when, at the age of about seven, she watched her brother Jeremy train with the NSW country soccer team. "I was just on the sidelines waiting for him, juggling the ball on my own, when the coach came up and said that I could join their next session. I was the only girl and the boys were much older than me. I don't remember this but apparently I was like, really good, smashing all the boys."

Belinda and Scott decided to give both Ellie and Jeremy the chance to compete in competitions across the state. This required a brutal schedule of long drives for training and games. "Honestly I can't believe they did that for me," Carpenter says. "From Cowra we used to drive to Canberra every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, which was more than two hours there and back, and then sometimes we would play in Sydney which was four hours there and back on the same day. I would spend so much time in the car, doing my homework or making up quizzes and things just to pass the time."

By the time Carpenter was 12, it was clear that she had natural talent but could no longer be nurtured from Cowra. So Belinda quit her job and moved with both the children to Sydney so they could attend Westfield Sports High School in Sydney's west, which had a specialist sports program.

It was a big school in a big city, a culture shock for a country girl. "It was a huge change, I became this small fish in a big sea," she says. Not long afterwards, her parents divorced, a time which she describes as difficult and sad.

The following year, aged 13, Carpenter went to watch the Matildas play in Sydney. "I think there was a maximum of 1000 people there but I watched the national team play and I was like 'Oh, sick, I want to be that.' Then two years later, I was on that team. It was crazy."

Carpenter's precocious talent turned heads in the soccer world at that time, and things unfolded quickly. She broke into the "Mini-Matildas" under-17 team at the age of 14, and when she turned 15 signed her first professional contract with the then W-League club Western Sydney Wanderers. The coach was so impressed with her that she didn't even need to trial for the team.

Carpenter's ambition was such that although she began her career as a midfielder, she volunteered to be a defender when the Mini-Matildas said they needed defenders only because she didn't want to be cut from the squad. "I was like, I want to be in the team so I will play wherever."

In March 2016, when she was still just 15, Carpenter made her debut for the senior Matildas, playing in a 9-0 victory over Vietnam.

Not long afterwards, she was playing for Australia in the Rio Olympics, the first of the strong of "youngest ever" firsts that she would soon tire of. "Obviously I was so young - I think I was the youngest in that team by five years," she recalls. "So I guess I was kind of on my own. Some players were 30 years old and some of them were a bit like 'Who is this 15-year-old who has come into the team?' and some people don't want you there because you might take their spot. So some didn't like me being there, but you've just gotta keep going."

After the Rio Olympics, Heather Garriock, who was then coaching, says that she noticed that the 16-year-old Carpenter was struggling. "I could see she wasn't doing well with the massive comedown after the hype of the Olympic Games. So, you know, I just put my arm around her - and since then I've always put my arm around and taken her under my wing. She just wanted to be the best and to get better every day.

"She is so driven to win and yet she's got such a nice nature, a humble kind of girl who will always give you her time."

Carpenter says she was forced to grow up quickly, but with the help of people like Garriock she eventually found her rhythm and adapted to the ever-growing public glare of being a Matilda. "I think it took me a couple of years, until I was about 17, to come out as Ellie," she says.

In Year 10 Carpenter dropped out of school to pursue her dream of being a full-time footballer. "She wasn't at school very much anyway," says Belinda of her daughter's busy soccer schedule. "I just told her, 'Go do it, because if it fails and you don't get to where you want to go in soccer, we will go back and figure out the education route'."

When Carpenter was 17 she was pursued by the US National Women's Soccer League team Portland Thorns, in Oregon on the US west coast. She signed with them but, in those days, women were not allowed to play until they turned 18. The club was so keen for her to play that she signed a contract literally on her 18th birthday, and played the following week, racking up yet another series of "youngest evers." "That's why I was the youngest ever player and the youngest ever person to score a goal in the NWSL at that stage," she says.

Carpenter says life in the US was a shock "because it was so different to Australia." Belinda recalls that her daughter would often FaceTime her during dinner just to have a companion to speak with. "Until she found her feet I would often hang out with her on the phone while she was having dinner at a restaurant or something when she didn't really know anybody.

"Even though Ellie is really outgoing, with a wicked sense of humor, I think she is also a bit guarded about who she lets in."

Even so, Carpenter says she enjoyed her two years in Portland where she regularly played in front of crowds of 20,000. By this stage she had become a fixture of the Matildas team, playing in the 2019 World Cup in France where they made it to the round of 16 and then the 2020 Tokyo Olympics where the Matildas made it to the semi-finals.

By the time she turned 20, Carpenter was being pursued by the strongest women's team in the world, Olympique Lyonnais. She recalls the moment she learned that Lyon wanted to recruit her. "I was like, 'Are you serious?' It was Lyon and I was like, 'Are you sure they want me?' I mean, if Lyon calls, you go to them wherever you re because they are the best in the world." This is no exaggeration - the team has won eight Champions League finals in the past 12 years, including give in a row between 2015 and 2020.

But Carpenter's arrival in 2020 wasn't so easy. "It was the time of the COVID pandemic so the city was shut. I didn't know anyone, and I didn't know French," she says. So she began her life anew yet again, throwing herself into French lessons and making friends at her new club. She impressed local fans by trying to speak French at press conferences, albeit with an Aussie twang. She also fell in love with Lyon itself. "I love it, it's beautiful - not as nice as Sydney but it's still beautiful." As soon as she arrived, she also saw why her new team kept winning championships. The fitness, the training, the skills were next-level, even for Carpenter. "She called me up and said, 'Um, Mum, these players are really, really good," recalls Belinda. Initially she found it hard to break into her new team, and she won her first European Championship with Lyon in 2020 without taking to the field when she was on the team as an unused sub.

"I don't think many people understand what it really takes to be a football player," says Carpenter's teammate and partner Danielle van de Donk. "You win trophies and everyone thinks it is a high but no one really knows about the lows." Van de Donk, who has been going out with Carpenter for about two years, says she has the rare ability to lift the team's morale singlehandedly. "She is the most energetic person I know, she is very, very positive, and off the pitch she just brings a different kind of energy to the room - even when she was injured the coaches were saying to her, 'Bring your energy to the team, we need it,'" says van de Donk. "She is already a star but she is just going to get bigger and bigger. She is only 23."

Van de Donk says she's attracted to Carpenter because they are "similar people in life", adding "It's kind of wild, she is from Australia, I'm from the Netherlands, and we are buying a house in Lyon - it's very cool."

After that tricky start at Lyon, Carpenter became a regular in the team - until the 13-minute mark of last year's Champions League final. "It was just sickening to watch her go down," recalls Belinda, who was watching the game live in the middle of the night from her home in Wamberal on the NSW Central Coast. "I actually said when I watched it, 'She does not go down and she does not stay down'."

Carpenter's injury came in two parts. The first came when she was tackling an opponent near the corner post and her left knee twisted in the tackle. Carpenter hobbled off in obvious pain. But she was desperate to come back on, and tested the injured knee in front of the team's medical staff. "I remember being on the sideline and they were testing me and I was like, 'Is it strong, can you feel my ACL?' And they were like, 'Yeah I think it's fine, so you want to go back on?' And I'm like, 'Yeah, it's the Championship Final.' So I ran back on and then I was like 'Oh, something's not right'."

Back in Wamberal, Belinda was horrified to see her daughter run back onto the pitch. "We were like, 'No, no, no, don't do it," she recalls.

Moments after returning to the field Carpenter moved to intercept a long pass. But as soon as she changed direction her knee gave way completely, severing her ACL and sending her to the ground.

Van de Donk, who was watching from the sidelines as a substitute, had torn her own ACL as a teenager and knew what lay ahead. "I saw her go down and instantly I knew it was wrong," she recalls. "It was horrible to watch."

But once Carpenter counted the months and realised she could still potentially play in the World Cup in Australia, her mood lifted. Lyon won the match 3-1, giving Carpenter her second championship and yet another first as the only Australian to win two Champions League medals. After the match, despite having her injured leg in a splint, Carpenter joined her teammates in the celebrations on the field, swimming precariously on her crutches and then hopping on her one good leg as she held up the Champions League cup. She then flew back to Lyon with the team and continued the celebrations. "I was in so much pain, so I just took lots of painkillers but then we went to a restaurant and partied in Lyon drinking champagne until 5am."

The next morning Carpenter woke with a hangover to the bad news she had feared. She needed a full knee reconstruction and would be out of the game for up to a year. Recalls Belinda: "The first thing she said to me on the phone was, 'I'm getting an operation, I'm going to get better and I'm going to play in the World Cup.' It was all about the World Cup."

That has been Carpenter's singular goal ever since. In those early months after her injury when she could not run, she followed her rehab plan like it was Holy Writ - long hours in the gym keeping the muscles working followed by swimming, physio, massage and the hardest of all: patience.

"I had to learn a lot about patience because I am impatient," she says. "When I was finally able to take my first jump again I actually cried with happiness." At times Carpenter wondered whether she would be the same player when she returned, but mostly she says she kept her mental demons at bay.

"It was a long journey for her and she was a bit insecure in the beginning, she struggled for about three weeks," says van de Donk. "But after that she was OK, she just powered through - and now I think she's much stronger than she was." Carpenter, for her part, puts a gloss on the whole saga, saying she believes it gave her a much-needed break from the game she'd been playing almost non-step since she was a child.

Today, Carpenter's football routine is very full-time. She goes into the club from around 9am to 4pm most days to do a mixture of training, gym recovery and sponsorship. Then she plays on weekends, often traveling. She works with a nutritionist and also a psychologist. She estimated she gets one day properly off each month. Such is the profile of the team in Lyon that she now gets recognised in the street, and after three years here she says she is now fluent in French.

"Ellie has always known the path that she wanted and she has just followed it completely. That is pretty incredible for a 23-year-old," says former Matildas player Garriock. "She is already one of the world's best players and her energy and leadership are crucial for the World Cup. She has achieved things at 23 that others wouldn't achieve in their whole career. I have no doubt that she will be the captain of the Matildas in the future. She has all the leadership qualities and the big game experience."

Carpenter is now on the home stretch of her quest, hoping to stay in form and avoid injury until the World Cup begins in three weeks.

Although she loves playing for Lyon, she says there's nothing like going home to play with the Matildas. "It's like going back to your family." she says with a grin. "We've all known each other for years. Everyone is so close, We can all laugh at ourselves and we look after each other. It's such a good, strong group. I don't know how to explain it but I have a special passion when I play for the Matildas, it's unique. For me, this World Cup is the top of the top it's probably the best thing I will ever experience."

So how far can Carpenter and the Matildas go in this World Cup?

"We've never seen an Australian team like this," says Garriock. "This core of players like Ellie Carpenter, Sam Kerr and Caitlin Ford have played together in World Cups and big tournaments since they were 16 years old. They are in their prime and this is their moment. It is written for them."

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Time for the first star? Marta and women's football's struggle for recognition in Brazil

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