Marta

Marta Vieira da Silva (born 19 February 1986), known as Marta, is a Brazilian-Swedish professional footballer who plays as a forward for the Orlando Pride in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and the Brazil national team.

Marta is often regarded as the greatest female footballer of all time.

After playing for the CSA youth team, Marta started her professional career at Vasco Da Gama in 2000.

After two years, she was transferred to Santa Cruz, a small club in the state of Minas Gerais, where she would play for two more seasons, before joining Umeå IK of Sweden.

She was a member of the Brazilian national teams that won the silver medal at the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics.

She was also awarded the Golden Ball (MVP) at the 2004 FIFA U-19 Women's World Championship and won both the Golden Ball award as the best player and the Golden Boot award as the top scorer in the 2007 Women's World Cup after leading Brazil to the final of the tournament.

At the club level, Marta won the UEFA Women's Cup at Swedish club Umeå IK in 2004 and won seven Swedish league championships during her time playing for various teams in the country.

Marta joined Umeå IK before the 2004 season, during which Umeå reached the final of the UEFA Cup, winning 8–0 on aggregate against Frankfurt, with Marta scoring three goals over the two-legs.

In the league, despite amassing a total of 106 goals, which was 32 more than the Champions, Umeå finished second, beaten by a single point by Djurgården.

Marta scored 22 league goals and got on the scoresheet at the cup final against Djurgården, scoring the only goal in a 2–1 Umeå loss.

Her second season (2005) ended with Marta scoring 21 goals and Umeå winning the league, having gone undefeated.

Once again, Umeå was beaten by Djurgården in the cup, losing by a score of 3–1 in the final, thus avenging a 7–0 league defeat to Umeå some three weeks earlier.

Marta's life and football prowess was depicted in the 2005 Swedish television documentary "Marta – Pelés kusin" ("Marta – Pelé's cousin").

She has been named FIFA World Player of the Year six times, five of them being consecutive (from 2006 through 2010) and the latest award coming in 2018.

Marta holds the record for being Brazil's top goalscorer with 115 goals.

In 2006, Umeå again won the league without losing, and Marta, as in the previous year, was the league's top scorer with 21 goals.

Umeå cruised to an 11–1 aggregate win over Norwegian side Kolbotn FK in the UEFA Women's Cup, with Marta scoring twice in both matches.

For the third time in a row, she was on the losing side in the Swedish cup final when her side was defeated 3–2 by Linköpings FC.

The 2007 season was relatively successful for Umeå, with the club winning both the league, in which they finished nine points ahead of Djurgården, and the Swedish Cup, beating AIK 4–3 in a match in which Marta scored a hat-trick, the last (winning) goal coming three minutes from time.

Marta scored 25 goals in the league, finishing one goal behind the top scorer Lotta Schelin.

In the UEFA Women's Cup they reached the final for the fourth time but suffered a disappointment, losing 1–0 on aggregate to Arsenal.

The 2008 season saw Umeå and Marta win another Swedish championship title.

After the end of the season, speculation arose concerning the future of Marta and a couple of months later, on the day of the FIFA World Player of the Year Awards in January 2009, Marta announced that she would play for the American side Los Angeles Sol for the next three years.

At the request of Marta, the Los Angeles side also purchased Johanna Frisk from Umeå IK, which led to a report by Swedish TV4 sports presenter Patrick Ekwall that Marta and Frisk were a lesbian couple.

Both players denied this to be true.

On the day she was named FIFA World Player of the Year in January 2009, Marta announced that she would be joining Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) team Los Angeles Sol for the league's inaugural season on a three-year contract.

Of her signing, she said, "For me, the most important thing is to be in a place where the best players in the world are playing, and this is what they are trying to do here. The American League is being considered one of the best in the world, so I had to come now."

Marta was the league's top scorer for the 2009 season with ten goals and three assists.

The Sol were regular season champions and reached the WPS Championship Final, where it lost 1–0 to Sky Blue FC.

During the off-season with Los Angeles Sol, she signed a three-month loan contract with Santos to play in the Copa Libertadores and in the Copa do Brasil, helping her club win both competitions, and scoring a goal in the Libertadores final and two in the Copa do Brasil final.

In January 2010, the Sol ceased operations and the rights to Marta, and her teammates were made available in the 2010 WPS Dispersal Draft.

The rights to Marta were acquired by the FC Gold Pride as their first pick.

She appeared in all of the Pride's 24 games and scored 19 goals, earning her the WPS MVP and WPS Golden Boot for the second year in a row.

In January 2013, she was named one of the six Ambassadors of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, alongside Amarildo, Bebeto, Carlos Alberto Torres, Ronaldo and Mario Zagallo.

She also appeared in the Sveriges Television television documentary series The Other Sport from 2013.

In August 2016, Marta was one of the eight to carry the Olympic Flag in the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

She was appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations as a Sustainable Development Goals advocate.

In 2017, Marta received Swedish citizenship and now has double citizenship in both Brazil and Sweden.

Marta was discovered by Brazilian female coach Helena Pacheco when she was 14 years old.

With 17 goals, Marta also holds the record for most goals scored in any World Cup, women’s or men's. Moreover, she was the first footballer of any gender to score at five different World Cups, a feat matched by Christine Sinclair in 2019 and Cristiano Ronaldo in 2022, and also the first footballer, female or male, to score at five consecutive Olympic Games.