Great speeches by female footballers — Abby Wambach and Marta
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Great speeches by female footballers — Abby Wambach and Marta
I just did my regular fortnightly segment on Sammy J’s ABC Melbourne Breakfast show and the topic we chose was great speeches made by female sports stars.
It’s been an incredible few weeks for women’s sport here in Australia, as the Matildas set television viewing and attendance records around the country at the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Australians and New Zealanders turned out for the tournament in force, most non-host country matches were sell-outs too, and it felt like a transformative moment for the country and for sport.
In actual fact, the momentum has swelled from a trickle to a torrent over two decades, with so many great athletes and spokespeople doing their bit to build the women’s game.
The two champions I featured in the segment were the USA’s Abby Wambach, who is the all time highest goal scorer for the US nation team, and Brazil’s Marta (no second name required) who is six time FIFA World Player of the Year and the greatest female player of all time.
Here are snippets of the two speeches I featured in the segment:
Abby Wambach’s ‘We are the wolves’ is a famous Barnard College commencement. Barnard is an all-women’s liberal arts college in New York, and so Wambach was addressing an audience of women. ‘Welcome to the wolf pack’ has become a successful book for Wambach, drawing on the metaphor in this speech. It’s strong on metaphor, anecdote and delivery. Highly recommended.
Like all little girls, I was taught to be grateful. I was taught to keep my head down, stay on the path, and get my job done. I was freaking Little Red Riding Hood.
You know the fairy tale: It’s just one iteration of the warning stories girls are told the world over. Little Red Riding Hood heads off through the woods and is given strict instructions: Stay on the path. Don’t talk to anybody. Keep your head down hidden underneath your Handmaid’s Tale cape.
And she does… at first. But then she dares to get a little curious and she ventures off the path. That’s of course when she encounters the Big Bad Wolf and all hell breaks loose. The message is clear: Don’t be curious, don’t make trouble, don’t say too much or BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN.
I stayed on the path out of fear, not of being eaten by a wolf, but of being cut, being benched, losing my paycheck.
If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing it would be this:
“Abby, you were never Little Red Riding Hood; you were always the wolf.”
So when I was entrusted with the honor of speaking here today, I decided that the most important thing for me to say to you is this:
BARNARD WOMEN—CLASS OF 2018—WE. ARE. THE. WOLVES.
The whole speech is great. The bit we cut out for ABC was an incredible anecdote about watching Michelle Akers, the great US footballer of the generation preceding Wambach, compete. Hopefully, one day, I get Wambach on the podcast.
Marta’s wonderful and famous barreling of the camera in a post match interview at FIFA World Cup 2019 in France is surely a contender for the best post match interview in sport. The way she goes from speaking to the reporter, to speaking to all the girls and women of the world is spine-tingling, and you’ve got to be the best footballer of all time to so effortlessly drop your own one word name in the third person. And what about that last line? ‘Cry in the beginning, so you can smile at the end.’ Beautiful.
Translation from Portuguese:
It’s wanting more, it’s training more, it’s taking care of yourself more
It’s being ready to play 90 plus thirty minutes
This is what I ask of the girls
There’s not going to be a Formiga forever
There’s not going to be a Marta forever, not going to be a Cristiani
The women’s game depends on you to survive
[pointing directly down barrel of camera)
So think about that
Value it more. Cry in the beginning so you can smile in the end.
I’ve spent much of the last month following the Matildas around the country and writing about them for my Good one, Wilson newsletter. You can read the pieces and sign up for free below. Or you can reply ‘yes’ to this email and I’ll add you to the list.
