Esther González is at the top of her game. The 32-year-old striker’s list of accolades – World Cup winner, three-time Liga F champion, National Women’s Soccer League champion, Copa de la Reina victor and Concacaf W Champions Cup winner – is matched by few in the sport. But as a young girl growing up in southern Spain, her path was uncertain, rife with obstacles. “As a child, I dreamed of what I wanted to be when I grew up,” she says. “It was a soccer player. But, let’s say, circumstances didn’t allow me to see women’s soccer or anything close to women’s soccer.”
As she grew up with three sisters, González’s earliest memories of football were playing with her hermanas in their small village in Andalusia. She dreamed of being a footballer, but there wasn’t a path before her. The shy young talent with a nose for goals would play with the local boys: they needed a goalscorer and she stepped in. As González grew, her father took her on car journeys of more than four hours each way to get to training.
