Caroline Graham Hansen was 14 years previous when she first came upon that there was a girls’s nationwide crew in Norway. Solely then, after 10 years of enjoying soccer for 3 hours day-after-day – regardless of how chilly or moist the climate in Oslo – did she notice {that a} sport she enjoys a lot may additionally develop into her profession.
Now 27, Graham Hansen is wanting ahead to enjoying on the all-sold-out Camp Nou within the Champions League towards Actual Madrid on Wednesday in entrance of over 90,000 followers on the Camp Nou, the place the ladies’s crew will play solely their second aggressive sport, with a 3-1 lead from going match.
Barcelona are hoping to e book their place within the Champions League semi-finals, however they already sealed their third consecutive Serie A title earlier this month with a 5-0 win over Madrid. They received their first-ever Champions League title final season to culminate in a treble marketing campaign, and they’re on their strategy to extra success this season: along with the league, they’ve already received the Spanish Tremendous Cup – the one trophy they eluded final season – and so they have received all 36 matches that they’ve received. Carried out in all competitions. They may end the season with 4 titles this time round, with the semi-finals on the Copa de la Reina.
Graham Hansen and her fellow FC Barcelona profitable teammates are main the way in which for a brand new era of feminine footballers. It is a era of gamers who encourage confidence on the pitch and anticipate extra from the game off it.
The crew’s continued success has earned recognition for the people who’ve made Barcelona the very best crew in Europe. Ballon d’Or winner Alexia Putillas emerged because the crew icon. her face with a sloganthe Queen(“The Queen”), now filling billboards throughout city that have been previously reserved for Lionel Messi. And Dutch winger Lieke Martins, a former FIFA Greatest Award winner, can be a star in her personal proper.
Graham Hansen smiles at a extra curious case. Speak to anybody on the membership and they’re going to let you know that the Norwegian winger (together with Potilas) is the very best participant on the crew. Final season, she contributed 27 targets in 23 league video games (eight targets, 19 assists) and has 15 extra in 19 video games this season (5 targets, 10 assists).
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Behind the numbers, it is thrilling to observe. You’re taking the sport to the opponent, defeating the gamers as soon as after which hitting them once more. She says individuals on the membership have elegantly in contrast her to males’s participant Ousmane Dembele, though she wouldn’t bask in such comparisons herself. Check out the person awards, and surprisingly, you will not discover their title.
“Each participant needs recognition for what you are doing, however once I know my efficiency has helped my crew win the treble and the Champions League, that is all that issues,” she advised ESPN forward of Wednesday’s sport. “If I needed to play particular person sports activities, I might do one thing apart from soccer.”
The deletion of Graham Hansen from the 20-woman Ballon d’Or shortlist – in addition to not naming a single participant from Barcelona within the FIFPro World XI squad in January – sparked a broader debate over girls’s soccer protection.
“Dorina is not even broadcast on TV,” Graham Hansen added. “That is the primary yr that the Champions League is being broadcast, the place you may watch all of the matches wherever you need, everytime you need. That’s the largest drawback by way of ensuring our sport will get the popularity we deserve. It isn’t about particular person awards – for me it is about recognition. that our sport deserves, as a result of if you cannot watch the video games, how can individuals have an opinion on how one can proceed?”
There may be lastly mild on the finish of the tunnel in Spain, the place the league is ready to go skilled subsequent season. Graham Hansen, alongside together with her Barcelona teammates, lobbied for all groups to be given a extra equal enjoying discipline. She acknowledged that Barcelona’s home dominance – 25 wins in 25 league video games this season, 138 targets scored and simply seven targets – is available in half from a privileged place.
“We have to make sure that [every team] play on [real] She stated: “There have to make certain requirements associated to stadiums. There have to make certain requirements relating to contracts given to gamers and the period of time they practice in. All these little issues make a giant distinction.
“For those who can add that each one the video games will likely be televised, this is able to be an amazing product to promote as a result of there are numerous good gamers in Spain who aren’t seen. And they’re counted as unhealthy as a result of Barcelona received [big], however it’s not as a result of they’re unhealthy – it is simply because we’re so good. It is rather essential that we go skilled so that everybody will get the popularity they deserve.”
Again in Norway, they know the way good Graham Hansen is. I’ve scored 42 targets in 91 matches for the nationwide crew, and in a rustic that at present has two of the sport’s prime scorers – Lyon striker Ada Hegerberg and Borussia Dortmund striker Erling Haaland – Graham Hansen’s face is adorning Pepsi bottles throughout the nation. It is a partnership that you just assume is extra essential than you may at first assume.
“To begin with, it’s a must to placed on a face that individuals need to see,” she defined. “I feel particularly in Norway, however anyplace on the planet, to assume that your face goes to be on a Pepsi is unattainable as a result of you’re a girls’s soccer participant. This marketing campaign is to alter the way in which individuals have a look at our sport and make it extra seen.
“If it additionally makes the youthful era, girls and boys, have a look at you and assume ‘I need to be me’ and [the girls] You see that it’s doable to have the identical goals and targets as boys do. To be part of that, to alter the way in which younger women have a look at what they will obtain in the event that they develop into skilled footballers, is a big factor.”
Graham Hansen needed to develop into a pilot like her uncle when she was youthful and in addition performed golf, a passion she gave up when it began conflicting with soccer. She is grateful to her supportive dad and mom who helped her notice her dream of enjoying professionally, which began with native crew Stabaek, when many advised her it was inconceivable.
At Stabaek, in addition to enjoying on the ladies’s crew, she skilled with the boys’s groups earlier than, by way of a quick stint in Sweden, the place she moved to Wolfsburg on the age of 19.
Issues weren’t at all times really easy in Germany. Ongoing knee accidents threatened to derail her profession, sending her off the sector out of the country to which she had relocated on her personal. She realizes that that interval was harder than the second she had final November, when a panic within the coronary heart dominated her out for greater than a month.
“I can not depend on my household,” Graham Hansen stated of her resolution to go to Germany alone. “It was my selection, and I needed to personal it. If it was going to be arduous, that is my selection, nobody pushed me to do it. There are arduous moments. It is arduous for everybody who strikes away from dwelling for the primary time. It’s a must to study to dwell once more in the identical breath.” A time if you study a brand new tradition and a brand new language. You might be handled like an grownup, whereas you should still be a baby. There are such a lot of issues that make you develop up rapidly.”
Graham Hansen additionally spoke about how speaking to a psychiatrist helped her throughout a few of these darkish days. She got here out the opposite aspect stronger, profitable three consecutive Bundesliga titles with Wolfsburg, and was ready for the criticism she confronted for her transfer to Barcelona in 2019.
At that time, Barcelona was simply an rising pressure within the girls’s sport. They have not received the league title since 2015 and her resolution to maneuver to Spain was seen as a monetary one. Since then, her performances on the sector have silenced that line of thought.
“I knew this crew was of top of the range and I needed to be part of that journey,” she stated. “Defeat the Champions League” [to Lyon in 2019] It was type of a turning level for everybody. I used to be new, however had heard quite a bit about how issues modified, particularly bodily. That was the important thing as a result of if we have been match sufficient, no person would beat us the way in which we play. That is how superior we’re. That is the type of confidence now we have in our sport.
We’ve got a coach [Jonatan Giraldez] From the craziness that drives us in each coaching session, to discovering the little particulars the place we will compete in each facet of the sport. Discovering starvation in the way in which you’re employed day-after-day is the one strategy to preserve competing.”
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Ballon d’Or winner Alexia Putillas talks concerning the significance of Worldwide Ladies’s Day.
Regardless of cup after cup, there was a drop at instances in Barcelona. Final November, simply days after Sergio Aguero was identified with a coronary heart drawback that might pressure him to retire, the membership’s medical doctors additionally found that Graham Hansen had an irregular heartbeat.
“It’s totally intimidating,” she stated. “I feel for everybody, if you learn the headlines about coronary heart issues, for any athlete, it is scary. For me, it was surreal. All the things went actually quick. The membership took excellent care of me and made certain I used to be by no means afraid. I bought the knowledge that I wanted it when it was prepared. From there I bought the very best care to resolve my drawback. I used to be lucky to have a situation that wasn’t profession threatening. But it surely’s scary – and maybe even extra terrifying to the household round me.”
Graham Hansen has since resumed the place she left off a month after her exit from the crew, and a part of her brilliance on the sector lies in her in-game intelligence. Manchester Metropolis coach Pep Guardiola has been influenced by chess, and Graham Hansen, who performed in chess tournaments as a baby, has spoken deeply concerning the similarities between the sport and soccer.
“It is like a tactical a part of utilizing your mind another way,” she stated. “I play extra sporadically now than earlier than, however it’s a good way to compete and have enjoyable with my pals who’re additionally enjoying.
“Each transfer you make has a consequence or a possibility. However you at all times have to consider attacking and defending the way in which you play, as a result of each assault can assault you in three strikes. It is the identical factor in soccer. How a lot danger are you going to take by way of about how a lot area you’ve gotten? Will you allow it to be attacked? There are numerous tactical elements that it’s a must to contemplate. In fact, additionally it is fairly completely different, however in the way in which of research or psychological reasoning with reference to techniques, it may take numerous chess.”
This week, Graham Hansen will likely be enjoying soccer. If the Camp Nou is as full as anticipated, it’s going to break the file for attendance at a membership match in girls’s soccer, and these occasions will assist Graham Hansen obtain her broader targets: ensuring women do not have to attend till they’re 14 to appreciate that. A profession in soccer is a risk.
