If there’s one thing to know about Marta, it’s this — she never stops running.
It’s the first thing anyone on the Orlando Pride will say about her. Her energy is constant, contagious, infecting every minute of her movement on the pitch.
This relentless effort is the reason the striker scored a quarter of Orlando’s goals this season despite missing almost half of it due to the World Cup and an injury. And it’s why she’s the all-time leading goal-scorer at the World Cup, a six-time FIFA World Player of the Year and arguably greatest woman to ever play the game.
Marta simply doesn’t know how to hit the brakes. Pride coach Marc Skinner jokes that this makes it hard to manage the star when she’s injured, her eagerness to return to the pitch eclipsing any other concern.
“You know Marta, you can’t hold her down,” Skinner said. “She wants to run everywhere all the time. She’s one of the world’s best, if not the world’s best at what she does, and all of that comes from her energy. She galvanizes everybody.”
It’s a soccer thing, yes, but it runs deeper than that. Marta isn’t the type to slow down. She doesn’t relax following wins and she let her losses linger, either.
The soccer world saw that during the summer, when Marta debuted a new style of wearing a searing shade of lipstick on the pitch during each game. Her decision behind the new color was simple — she woke up and thought to herself, “I’m going to dare.”
Nineteen years into her professional career, Marta is always finding a way to redefine herself.
“I believe that I was born special,” Marta said. “I feel like it came with me, this passion for soccer. I just wanted to play soccer. I didn’t want to play with a doll. I would just play with the ball. It came with me and I followed that instinct to where I am today.”
Walking into a training session at Seminole Soccer Complex, it’s easy to find Marta. Her voice cuts across the field, audible even when she’s in the locker room suiting up at 8 a.m. The early start times don’t keep her from poking fun at her teammates, switching between Portuguese and English.
When rookies talk about joining the Pride, the name they most often bring up is Marta’s — she’s intimidating, she’s inspiring, she pushes them to be better every day.
This season, leading a Pride team that leaned heavily on a young, inexperienced roster, Marta never held back her frustration, often criticizing her team’s tendency toward sloppy mistakes. But she brought equal parts criticism and confidence — whenever Marta was on the field, her teammates knew they were playing with the absolute best.
“Marta is a very special player,” said Camila, her teammate at the international and club level. “Her will to never give up is in her blood, her motivation is in her blood. She really never stops running. You see, we miss her when she’s not on the field. She is the best, and I believe she’s showed that to the entire world.”
When Marta returned from the World Cup this summer, her impact on the Pride was felt immediately, scoring four goals in her first three games back in purple. But to Skinner, her impact goes beyond just putting the ball in the net.
When she’s on the pitch, Marta makes the rest of the Pride better — creating passing sequences with Claire Emslie, curling dangerous crosses off corners, opening up the field for the rest of her team.
“Marta came back and I saw the younger players grow,” Skinner said. “She can dribble past five or six players because that’s what Marta does … but she also lives and breathes that confidence. That’s what she gives them.”
Legendary player, amazing speech, hate to see the World Cup end for Marta and Brazil but this display of passion and perspective was as satisfying to watch as any golazo:
— Ives Galarcep (@SoccerByIves) June 23, 2019
It’s been a hard year for Marta. First, her Brazilian team was left reeling after suffering elimination in a Round of 16 World Cup loss to France. Then, she returned to an Orlando Pride team hamstrung by injuries that finished 4-16-4. Challenges followed her off the field with the breast cancer diagnosis of teammate Toni Pressley, a period that she said was “very emotional” for the entire team.
But Marta is quick to turn to the positive, noting that each challenge reflects how she improves. Learn from the losses. Grow from the wins. Marta knows that she wouldn’t be where she is today without a healthy balance of the two.
During almost two decades as a professional soccer player, Marta has seen the game grow more than most. She grew up in Brazil, where she says children are “born with a ball at their feet.” But in her hometown of Dois Riachos, she had to defend her love for the game every day. Marta was pulled from a youth tournament because girls weren’t allowed to play soccer, then had to move to Rio at the age of 14 to find a place where the women’s game was supported.
Since then, she’s weathered the collapse of leagues, seen World Cup audiences bloom from tens of thousands to more than a billion fans. Now, she enjoys the luxuries of a sport that is finally making space for women — better facilities and resources, higher levels of preparation, global recognition.
When she delivered an impromptu speech following Brazil’s elimination from the World Cup, she didn’t focus on equal pay. She focused on the game. While she staunchly stands by her colleagues in fighting for equality, Marta focuses just as keenly on something else — she wants the quality of women’s soccer to grow as well, especially in Brazil.
“I’m constantly telling the young ones that it’s not an easy path, but it’s a doable path,” Marta said. “You can get there, but you only get there with dedication. It’s not going to be easy. We have all of this happening, but we still need to do our part for the game. We need to value the moment and also value ourselves as well through all of our hard work.”
One morning toward the end of the season, Pride training was louder than normal. The team had invited the Black Swans supporters group to attend the session and the fans cheered during every drill as if it was a game.
In the final minutes of a scrimmage, Marta danced on and around the ball before drilling a shot to cheers from the fans on the sideline. She turned and jokingly shoved an assistant coach out of the way, pulled up into a dramatic stop and bowed with a flourish of her arm.
Amid the hard work and passion for the game, Marta still having fun. She’s well known for the fearsome scowl that comes with her in-game concentration, but at Pride training, she’s quick to smile and arguably is the player most likely to break out an impromptu dance move.
Her joy reflects the opposite of what she fears about the men’s game, where she feels many players have traded their passion for a fixation on money and fame. As the women’s game grows, she hopes that players will hold onto the love that keeps them on the pitch now.
When Marta plays, she says, it’s for the same reason that she played when she was a little girl scrapping for minutes in a street game in Dois Riachos — for the ball, for the win, for love.
“It’s pretty simple,” Marta said. “I just love what I do. I dedicated my entire life to this game and always I just want to get better. This motivation comes from both. If you’re winning, that’s right, so keep doing what you’re doing. If you’re losing, then there’s something to get better and make better. Always, it’s just looking forward.”