NOS Football••Amended
As a young girl, Lieke Martens had a dream that did not yet exist: she wanted to become a professional football player. Where do you start when you have no one to mirror yourself, in a country that does not have a women’s competition at the highest level?
Other Times Sports Looking for the roots of former Orange-international Martens, who grew from a modest girl from Limburg into a sign of global women’s football.
“It was a dream that did not exist at that time, something hopeless. What were you going to achieve with it?”
Unchangeable
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In a yellow -blue, far too wide shirt from SV Montagnards, Martens is introduced to football for the first time. At the amateur club a stone’s throw from her parental home, she starts in the boy’s team of which her father is the team leader. “It was not obvious that a girl started playing football,” she says.
Other Times Sport: Lieke Martens, the first football girl idol
Her talent does not go unnoticed. After a switch to an amateur team that plays at a higher level, she is invited at the age of fifteen for a talent team of the KNVB. In Amsterdam she attracts the attention of the union, and in particular that of national coach Vera Pauw.
A little later she makes her professional debut at SC Heerenveen. During her first seasons in the Eredivisie for Women, she has to bring money herself to be able to play football. Professional football as a self -paid hobby.
Figure
Then it goes fast. After Standard Liège and Duisburg, she moves to Sweden at the age of 21, where she plays for four years. During this period she also breaks through the Dutch national team, with which she is active at the World Cup in Canada in 2015.
A tournament not to forget. Although the Orange squad is eliminated in the eighth finals, the team plays for a record number of spectators. “Then I thought: we are really on the right track. We are heading in the right direction with women’s football.”
Rinse ahead to 2017, the dream year in which Martens becomes the figurehead of global women’s football. A year in which the successes follow up, starting with the European Championship in their own country.
Martens had dream that did not exist: ‘Becoming a professional football player was something hopeless’
“We thought: wow, this is really something completely new,” says Martens about the support and attention that the Dutch national team receives during the tournament. Almost every competition is sold out. “We thought: this is going rock.”
Thanks in part to three goals from Martens, Orange wins the European Championship. She is also accurate in the final (4-2 win over Denmark): in the 28th minute she signed with a long shot for the 2-1.
The ceremony in Utrecht, where 22,000 people come, makes a deep impression on Martens. “Wasn’t it just bizarre that the Netherlands would also like women’s football in one go?”
Individual awards
The top scorer does not become Martens, but UEFA calls her a player of the tournament. Even more individual awards follow. In August she is elected European football player of the year. She shares the stage with Cristiano Ronaldo, who has won with the men.
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Lieke Martens with the prize for best player at the European Championship 2017 -
Cristiano Ronaldo and Lieke Martens with the prize for European football player and football player of the year -
Together with the selection of the Dutch national team, Lieke Martens watches how she is voted world football player of the year at a FIFA congress
The crowning of the super year follows in October, as Martens is named the best player in the world by FIFA. Martens will definitely become the figurehead of global women’s football.
“I didn’t know what happened to me. My prestige kept growing,” says Martens, who after the European Championship makes the switch to FC Barcelona, her dream club. She appears for a record amount in women’s football.
Difficult to manage
She has a hard time dealing with fame at the time, she says. “I had not played a match yet or in the Barça store I was on a very big poster from head to toe. I almost felt burdened.”
“The girls who had been playing there for years did not have that. It was nice, but also very double. I had become a signboard. It was difficult to manage.”
Martens had difficulty with fame and after switching to Barça: ‘difficult to manage’
Martens is now used to life in the spotlight. Last year she said goodbye to Oranje after no less than 160 international matches. With an impressive change of audience, she said goodbye to the Dutch supporters at the castle in Rotterdam in her last home game.
Now, at the age of 32, Martens is considering the future. She has become a mother, has already taken her first steps as a TV analyst and has an expiring contract with Paris Saint-Germain. How she will fill in the rest of her career is not yet known.
Whatever her choice, she will stay an idol. While she used to watch movies from Ronaldinho because there was no female idol, there are now playing girls who view their actions, hoping to become a professional ever.
“That women’s football has received such a recognition, that is what I really wanted as a young girl. The appearance of women’s football grow.”
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