Brazil | Marta’s story deserves to be told, but who deserves to tell it?

A package of articles published Oct 5 on Brazilian Web portal Terra details the unique pressures facing Diego Graciano in promoting his biography of sensational 22-year-old Marta Vieira da Silva (see earlier articles, Sept 15 and 12 Sept 07). (Oct 13)

Books | Born in ‘invisible town,’ Marta gains life in visible ink

São Paulo, Sept 15 | Diego Graciano makes clear in the title of his biography the struggle of Marta Vieira da Silva against cultural norms. Você é mulher, Marta! (You Are a Woman, Marta!)—the book that Graciano has self-published, following single-minded pursuit of the story of the world’s greatest woman footballer—alludes to Marta’s mother’s reply when, as a girl, Marta asked her for a real ball.

Women’s football | ‘This book is dedicated to other Martas, barefoot and dirty’

Translation of the preface and prologue to Você é mulher, Marta (You Are a Woman, Marta!) (2008), the new biography of Marta Vieira da Silva by Diego Graciano. (Sept 15)

Women’s football | From Amish heartland, FC Indiana builds ‘multicultural vision’

Lafayette, Indiana, Jul 18 | FC Indiana in four years has become a force in women’s club soccer in the United States, winning two Women’s Premier Soccer League titles and one U.S. Open Cup. But despite origins within a Midwest Amish agricultural enclave, its influence extends worldwide.

‘Do other Martas exist?’ | In ‘machista’ Brazilian culture, one cannot be sure

Rio de Janeiro, Sept 12 | Argentine journalist Diego Graciano since 2004 has been assembling the story of Marta Vieira da Silva, Brazil’s greatest female player and a potentially galvanizing figure in lifting women’s status in her country.

With her exploits in the cathedral of Brazilian futebol in July, leading the team to a Pan American Games gold medal with 12 goals and having her footprints calcified in the Maracana’s Walk of Fame, she pushed herself into Brazil’s male-dominated sporting consciousness.

File under ‘aesthetics’ | 5 epiphanic goals from Marta Vieira da Silva

Rio de Janeiro, Jul 25 | Normally we do not post goal videos, but that these are goals by a woman—albeit one of the world’s best-known players, Marta Vieira da Silva of Brazil—and that they were scored at a “lesser” football competition, the 15th Pan American Games, means that otherwise they will rapidly fade into obscurity, as if they had never happened.

’Tis the season for tears | The extraordinary, untold story of Marta Vieira da Silva

Dois Riachos, Brazil, Dec 28 | Marta Vieira da Silva, proclaimed by FIFA on Dec 18 as the best player in women’s soccer, has been on the road for much of the past six years.

Beginning at 14, when she followed a path from the nordeste to Rio de Janeiro, seeking opportunity with Vasco da Gama, she has played around the world for age-group and the full Brazilian national team and now, professionally, for Umeå IK in Sweden. The journey took her to the Zurich Opera House last Monday night for recognition, at 20, on a gilded stage and with a golden trophy.

Women’s football | 5,624 miles, 7 goals, 2 Portlands and 1 mole (U.S. v. Ukraine)

Portland, Oregon, Sept 2 | U.S. Soccer Federation officials in 2005 improvised to fill out a slate of impromptu summer friendlies. One of those was a game against Ukraine, assisted on its visit by a West Coast–based expatriate known as “the mole.”