Marta retires from international football

Brazilian-born female footballing superstar Marta, who recently acquired Swedish citizenship, has today officially announced her retirement from international football. The five-time FIFA Player of the Year, one-time World Cup runner-up and two-time Olympic silver medalist, writing on her Facebook wall said;

“Today Thursday 16th March 2017 in the year of our Lord, I Marta Vieira da Silva, officially announce my retirement from international football. I would like to thank all of my fans for supporting me over the years in my ups and in my downs. Especially my downs, because I had so many of them because I never won a major international title with Brazil which, I have to admit, is my biggest regret. Losing back to back Olympic finals to the USA did hurt my ego a lot - especially the latter loss in 2008 when Hope Solo thwarted everything that my teammates and I threw at her. I don’t know if to say that she single-handedly stopped us that day or if Carli Lloyd just got lucky when she scored the winning goal.”

Marta went on:

“But frankly speaking I believe that it was my destiny never to win anything major with Brazil because a year before that we lost to the Germans 2-0 in the World Cup final despite smashing the Americans 4-0 in the semifinals and resigning them to their worst defeat ever at a major. It was quite obvious that that match took too much out of us because we simply ran out of steam in the final against Germany. I even missed a crucial penalty in the match which could have turned our fortunes around dramatically. To score against a world class goalie like Nadine Angerer you have to come real good and I must admit that I was not up to the task that day.”

The two-time Pan American Games Champion who spent ten years living and playing football professionally in Sweden, ended her post by saying:

“I guess one can conclude that in a way I am like the female Johann Cruyff - one of the best players playing for one of the best national teams in the world who has never won a World Cup. I don’t know if I should feel honoured or disappointed.”