Marta was asked question after question about what she had experienced Thursday, the thrill of a lifetime for any athlete, an utterly unexpected thrill for a woman soccer player in Brazil.
She had answered them all calmly until all of a sudden it hit her, and she burst into tears, her composure overwhelmed by emotion.
Who wouldn’t have come unstrung after reaching apotheosis in the temple of your sport, after hearing and seeing a country that often disdains women athletes — especially women soccer players — cheer as one to acclaim what you and your team had just done?
“This could not have come at a better moment,” Marta said. “We showed to the country what women’s soccer can do, what potential it has.”
Marta and her teammates, Olympic silver medalists in 2004, had just beaten an overmatched opponent, the United States Under-20 team, 5-0 in the Pan American Games soccer final in Maracana Stadium.
A crowd of 67,788, the largest ever to see a women’s match outside North America, had chanted Marta’s name over and over again. When that sound stopped ringing in her ears, she heard her 21-year-old feet squish into wet plaster in the stadium’s basement, where her footprints were left near those of Brazil’s soccer legends, men like Pele and Garincha and Zico.
Marta’s are the first female feet in the country’s soccer Walk of Fame.
“Of course there is prejudice [in Brazil], and that makes things much more difficult for women, not only in soccer but many other sports,” she said. “We are trying to find our place.
“I hope this means there will be more Martas and Formigas (a teammate) in the future. They want to play, but we need to have much better structures established for women’s soccer in Brazil.”
Brazil’s part-time coach, Jorge Barcellos, talked of the pressure his team felt playing at home. Left unspoken was how a defeat would have left these women as ignored and unappreciated as they always have been.
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phersh@tribune.com
GLOBETROTTING
*Philip Hersh checks on Rio de Janeiro, a prime competitor in the race for the 2016 Olympics. chicagotribune.com/hersh
