“Why would I be scared? It was in my character to want to acheive my goal and that was where my goal was. So I had to go there.”
–Marta Vieira da Silva, a Brazilian soccer player who was named the female player of the year by FIFA for the last three years, in story in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. Marta, 23, plays for the Los Angeles Sol, part of the Women’s Professional Soccer League, a new league which kicked off last week. Her journey to get here started at age 14, when she took a three-day bus trip from her hometown of Dois Riachos to Rio de Janeiro. Pursuing her dream of playing soccer around the world, she joined a squad with connections to the Brazilian women’s national team, and never looked back. –Jessica Shambora