“I was frustrated,” Formiga told the New York Times. She thought about retiring before this World Cup, but decided to stay when she realized the team needed her - it still has not cultivated enough talent to replace her. There has literally never been a women’s soccer tournament in the Olympics that didn’t include Formiga. She was 18 years old when women’s soccer debuted at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. She’s playing on a national team that didn’t exist when she was born, and not only did it not exist, it was against the law - if you think about it that way, it’s amazing,” said Elsey.įormiga was 17 years old when she played for the Brazilian team in the 1995 Women’s World Cup in Sweden. “If you think about progress that way, if you think about - okay, Formiga was born and literally, it was illegal for Brazilian women to play football.
Sissi, a Brazilian football legend, famously learned to play the sport by kicking doll heads, since she didn’t have access to soccer balls.īut the ban remained in effect until 1981, when Formiga was three years old. Women and girls continued to play football during this time - a testament, of course, to the power of the sport and the tenacity of women in Brazil - but they had to do it in the shadows. Brenda Elsey, associate professor of history at Hofstra University and co-author of Futbulera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America, told ThinkProgress. “Football became so important, infused with national identity and ideas about virility, masculinity, modernity, Brazilian race politics, that it wasn’t surprising that in 1941, the Brazilian government banned it for 40 years,” Dr. These events were slated to be too “violent” for women, and there was excessive concern by the white men in charge that the sport would interfere with a woman’s sexuality and femininity. In 1941, the National Sports Council in Brazil drafted Article 54, a decree which said that women in the country “will not be allowed to practice sports incompatible with the conditions of their nature,” such as football, boxing, rugby, polo, water polo, and multiple track and field events. Because when Formiga was born in 1978, it was illegal for women to play football in Brazil. She is a living, breathing symbol of how far women’s football has come in the last four decades, and how far it has left to go. This is her seventh World Cup - which, as one might guess, is a record for men and women. So as if it weren’t obvious constantly: I LOVE HER.There’s a lot of history on display at the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France, but no player represents more of that history - the heroics and the heartbreak, the progress and the barriers - than Formiga, Brazil’s 41-year-old midfielder.
People don’t tend to ask that question of male athletes, do they? I especially like her asking him why it’s considered necessary that she as an athlete have a “relationship” with the older generation of players, because she’s essentially right. She’s calm, even when he tries to goad her a little – okay, she’s not very calm about the Cat thing, which is interesting – but for the most part she seems really confident and articulate. And although her jaw is set, for just that one moment her eye twitches and you can see all the emotion that she’s trying really hard to hold back.Īdditionally: I think Hope comes across really well here. This is after she’s just told off US Soccer’s pr guy, Aaron Heifetz, for saying only players who played are permitted to speak, she doesn’t get to have a voice. You can see her eye twitch slightly while they repeat the question.
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The only time I ever saw the full clip was on Fox Football Phone In about a day or so after.īasically the camera man is just zooming in tight to get focus, and for just a moment he’s zoomed in on Hope’s eye. It makes me sad that they never show the full raw footage of that interview from 2007 anymore.
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