Nadia Nadim

Nadia Nadim was forced to flee Afghanistan as a child, before finding asylum – and football – in Denmark. Now, nearing her 100th cap and a newly qualified ...

I’d love to work in a hospital for a period, but getting out into the world and helping people who need it is the big dream. I’d been on the receiving end of three rough challenges already and it was clear that the opposition players didn’t want me to get on the ball. To have come from a war-torn country and grown up in a refugee camp, to being a French champion, was incredible. The coach rang me and said, ‘Nadia, we want to win the league and we think you can help us do that’. I knew how difficult it would be – Lyon are the most dominant women’s team in the world and have the best players. In 2014, I’d decided to leave Denmark and test myself against some of the best players in the world. I wasn’t the only daughter to become a sportswoman, either: my sister Diana is a boxer who’s won the Danish Championship seven times and the Scandinavian Championship on a couple of occasions. It wasn’t very long before the Danish national team took notice of my exploits, and after being granted citizenship when I was 20, I was overwhelmed to get a call-up. Sometimes I was subjected to racist name-calling in the playground, and some of the boys would try to hurt me or tell me that a girl shouldn’t be playing football. I kept performing for my club and eventually there was a breakthrough. I was soon considered one of the brightest young forwards in Danish football, and got signed by top-flight club Skovbakken. Despite still only being in my teens, I scored a lot of goals. When I was around 15, I received the best piece of advice in my entire career. We did some shooting practice and afterwards the coach said I had some promise, so he invited me to come and play officially.