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The Global Press Institute has done a wonderful 6 page story on the Nigerian women's soccer team's road to this years Women's World Cup! The story by Temitayo Olafinlua is absolutely amazing.

Here is the opening segment from the article:

Diana Asak, 32, a player-turned-coach, was 7 when she developed an interest in football, or soccer. She says she felt thrilled as she watched the players chase the football.

“I’d been seeing boys playing,” she says. “I thought, ‘This is something that I can do.’”

She started to play with them on the streets of Lagos, a port city in southwestern Nigeria.

“I was the only girl playing, yet I competed with them very well,” she says, tilting her head and resting her middle finger on it as she reminisces.

She says that eventually her day wasn’t complete without football, although her mother disapproved.

“She felt it would affect my academics,” Asak says.

She says her mother wasn’t the only parent with concerns.

“For most parents, seeing a female child kicking football is strange,” she says. “She has to be in the kitchen. They say that it is dropouts that play football. They say that as a girl footballer, you won’t give birth. You will look masculine.”

But she says she didn’t let her mother’s concerns – or being the only girl on the team – deter her.

“I was just a child, and I didn’t see myself as different from the boys,” she says. “We were all human beings. As far as anyone could do it, I believed that I should be able to try it out.”

Asak is now the coach of a women’s team in Lagos and a men’s team for University of Lagos postgraduate students. She is also pursuing her doctorate in sports psychology.

“That was the point that I proved to my parents – that I could play football and still be a success in school,” she says. “I had to fight for my desire to play football.”

Read more: http://www.globalpressinstitute.org/global-news/africa/nigeria/women’s-world-cup-begins-female-athletes-nigeria-demand-equality-sports#ixzz1QDEzMCtt

Every team at the Women's World Cup has taken a different path to get there. Some countries receive incredible support from their home countries. Others have had to fight tooth and nail to get where they are today. It is amazing that a team with as little funding and support as the Nigerians were able to qualify for the World Cup. Next time you hear so called "sports commentators" complaining about "lack of competition" in women's sports, make them read the above article by the Global Press Institute. Clearly there is more than just talent holding back some nations from reaching the top!

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• Soccer
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• SportsPLUS
• International/World
• FIFA

This post is related to an event on our Calendar:

• 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup, Germany

This post is related to the following ongoing stories:

• 2011 FIFA Women`s World Cup
• Soccer, rape and homophobia in South Africa

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