What do you do when you have one of the most accomplished players of all time on your squad, and she’s facing her last international game? If you’re Pia Sundhage, you give her fifteen begrudging minutes at the end of the game, and then baldly tell the world you don’t understand her legacy or what she means to football fans.
The opening night of the Torneio Internacional de Futebol Feminino saw 57th-ranked India meet the first of three South American national teams in a 7%-filled stadium nestled in the Amazon rainforest. It was a lowkey choice for the swansong of a player who has played in 4 distinct decades, 7 World Cups, and all 7 Olympic Games since women’s football was included. Formiga also took part in the 4-0 thrashing of the USWNT in 2007—their worst defeat ever—and made her international debut when Marta was just 9 years old.
Miraildes Maciel Mota was born in Salvador, Brazil, a year before the government lifted the ban on women’s football (decreed in 1941 by the National Sports Council and affirmed in 1965 by the country’s military regime). Against her brothers’ wishes, little Mira started playing on the streets of her hometown just a few years after the Brazilian Football Confederation started to develop the women’s game in 1983. She was on a team by age 12; at 15 she joined her first professional club, Sao Paulo, to whom she has recently returned. She got her first international cap at 17 years old, playing in the 1995 World Cup, and would go on to become the most capped player in Brazil.
Along the way she picked up the nickname that would become her professional moniker, Formiga, ‘the ant’, for her hard-working, collaborative style of play. This deeply respected staple of the national team developed her game in a club career that took her across Brazil, America and Europe. And as other players hung up their boots, she played, played and kept playing. At 43, she’s still playing—though Brazil’s game against India was her last international game, she will continue to play for Sao Paulo.
That night, for Brazil fans, the gulf between the teams meant the focus was largely on the retiring legend. For Indian fans and those who follow the growth of the women’s game and the emerging teams stepping up to take on the titans, it was a fascinating match-up that could have been planned and marketed infinitely better. Either way, for many supporters, the chance to mark #FormigaDay and watch the pioneering international in her final 90 was a set-the-alarm occasion. Except, it didn’t go that way.