SOCCER PLAYER AFGHANISTAN AND DENMARKI’m grateful I’m here and alive. And playing soccer, which I love.
—NADIA NADIM
Nadia was tired of being inside the back of the truck. She and her four sisters and their mother were packed inside a dark, windowless metal container with a bunch of other refugees, bouncing around like loose cargo. Eleven-year-old Nadia was exhausted and sore and hungry—their food was long gone.
How much longer?
When they paid the driver their money back in Italy, he told them it would take about twenty-four hours to get to London. They had family there who would take them in and help them find a place to live and work. But it felt like they had been on the road for days now.
Every time the truck slowed down, Nadia held her breath, worrying that they were being stopped, that they would be caught and sent back. Even though she missed her home, she did not ever want to go back to Afghanistan. Girls there were treated like animals. In Kabul, Nadia couldn’t go to school or even leave the house without a man by her side. And she certainly couldn’t play soccer—at least not in public.
Plus, the Taliban had murdered her father. If she and her family were sent back, they would probably be killed too. Suddenly, the truck slowed to a stop. Nadia’s thoughts raced around in a panic.
Is this it? Are we in London or are we caught? Will the police arrest us and send us home?
The doors to the back of the container swung open and light poured in.
“Get out,” said the driver. “We are here.”
Nadia shielded her eyes from the blinding sunlight. She couldn’t see anything for a minute, but when her vision returned, what she saw surprised her: it was a small village. There were cute little houses—some brick, some painted in bright pastel colors—lining narrow, deserted streets. The countryside around them was completely flat—so different from the mountains of Nadia’s homeland.
Where were the skyscrapers? Where were the busy streets and all the people?
The only person out on the street was a man walking his dog.
“Where are we?” Nadia’s mother asked him in English.
“You’re in Denmark,” he answered. “Randers, Denmark.”
Nadia was confused. They didn’t know anyone in Denmark and didn’t speak the language. But at the same time, she wasn’t too worried. After the long, hard journey and years of living in fear in Afghanistan, she finally felt safe. And as long and she and her family were together, it didn’t matter where they were.1
Although young Nadia had to start from scratch as a refugee in a new, unknown country, she would one day become one of the top female soccer players in the world and the pride of Denmark, her adopted home.
Nadia Nadim was born in 1988, in Herat, Afghanistan. Her father, Rabani, loved sports, especially soccer. But he had five daughters and no sons, and in Afghanistan, girls weren’t allowed to play soccer in public. Rabani, however, believed that girls should have the same opportunities as boys, so he secretly taught his daughters inside the garden walls of their Kabul home.
Nadia’s father was a high-ranking general in the Afghan National Army. In the early 1990s, an Islamic militia called the Taliban rose to power in the country. The Taliban cracked down on anyone who opposed them, including the Afghan army. (To learn more about the Taliban and what they did in Afghanistan, check out Malala's and Fawzia’s chapters.)
When Nadia was ten years old, the Taliban called her father in for a “meeting.” The family never saw him again. Six months later, they discovered the truth: the Taliban had murdered him. Nadia’s mother, Hamida, realized she and her five daughters had to leave Afghanistan immediately—the Taliban could kill them at any time. But even if they didn’t, Hamida didn’t want her daughters growing up in a country where they had no freedom and no chance for an education. Nadia remembers her life then: “Basically, if you are a woman, you are not a full person. My mom knew that if we stayed there we would not have any life.”2
Nadia speaks five languages: English, Danish, German, Persian, and Urdu.
So they fled. In 2000, with forged papers and passports, Hamida and her five daughters (ages three to thirteen) snuck first into Pakistan. From there, they flew to Italy and then traveled by truck to Denmark. Nadia was eleven when they arrived in their accidental new home. Danish police took Nadia’s family to a refugee camp in Copenhagen, where they lived for six months while their asylum request was processed.
Next to the refugee camp was a soccer club. Nadia and her sisters studied English and Danish in the mornings, but their afternoons were free, so Nadia played soccer for hours and hours every day. “That was the first time I saw girls and ladies playing soccer,” she remembers. “And I was like, ‘Wow, you can also do that!’ ”3
Eventually, Denmark agreed to let Nadia’s family stay in the country. They got an apartment, and the girls started school. Nadia also began playing on a girls’ soccer team called Gug Boldklub. From the start, it was obvious she was a gifted player. Fast, nimble, and fearless, she rose quickly through the ranks of Danish women’s soccer. In 2005, seventeen-year-old Nadia began playing professionally on Danish teams. By the time Nadia turned twenty, Denmark gave her citizenship and asked her to play for the their national team.
Nadia couldn’t apply for Danish citizenship until she was 18. When she was granted citizenship two years later, Denmark called her up to play for their national team. She was blocked from playing, however, because the international soccer rules stated she needed to be a citizen for five years. The Danish Football Association challenged the rule, and an exception was made for her; she got to play for Denmark just one year after becoming a citizen.
After Nadia played pro soccer in Denmark for ten years, the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) recruited her to play in America. In 2014, she joined Sky Blue FC (football club) in New Jersey, where she became an immediate sensation by scoring seven goals in six games. Sky Blue coach Jim Gabarra called Nadia a “once-in-a-generation” player.4
They didn’t get to keep her for long, however. In 2016, the top team in the league, the Portland Thorns, stole her away. Nadia is their striker, which means she’s on the team to score goals. “Goal scorers are really hard to find,” said her Sky Blue coach. “She just has this pure love of the game that comes out when she is playing.”5 During her season and a half at Sky Blue, she scored thirteen goals, and she’s scored twelve goals for her Danish national team (so far).6 While she’s still new to the Thorns, she is one of the top scorers on the team.
Her coaches and teammates have high praise for Nadia and what she’s overcome. Thorns midfielder Dagny Brynjarsdóttir said, “You can sometimes tell, when Nadia’s playing, what she’s been through. There’s so much passion; she works so hard and gives everything.”7
The Portland Thorns, Nadia’s current team, regularly have a crowd of 17,000 cheering for them, where Nadia’s old team, Sky Blue FC, has 2,000 fans on average. Average attendance for NWSL games is 5,558.11
Nadia is just as determined off the field as she is on it. For six years, Nadia attended medical school in Denmark. She was one of the few elite athletes in the world going to medical school while also training and competing at a professional level. Every day, she practiced up to seven hours with the Thorns and then hit the books when practice was over. Of her brutal routine, Nadia said, “Obviously it’s not easy. It takes a lot of time. You really have to want it. I want both from the bottom of my heart.”8
Nadia is also passionate about education, especially for refugees. She supports From Street to School, a Danish group that works to send Afghani street children back to school. By succeeding in both soccer and medicine, Nadia wants to send a message that girls and refugees can do anything if they are just given a chance: “It is important to see someone you can relate to. And to see ‘Okay, she has done this, it’s not impossible.’ If someone has done it, it makes it more possible, more realistic. . . . I know that will help people in the same situation.”9
Nadia is proof that anything is possible. She went from playing soccer in secret, in a country where it was illegal, to being one of the best female soccer players in the world. And today, she is inspiring kids—especially refugee kids who are struggling through terrible life-and-death situations—to not give up.10
From Street to School gives financial support to Afghan children who are homeless due to war or poverty by helping them to get an education and stay off the streets. Ten dollars gives a street child one week of school, food, and clothing. Fifty dollars pays for a month! To find out how you can get involved, go to FSTS.dk.
HOW WILL YOU ROCK THE WORLD?
I am going to rock the world by fighting for equal pay for women. When the US men’s soccer team got eliminated in the first round of the 2014 World Cup, they got paid $8 million; yet when the women’s team won the 2015 Women’s World Cup, they got just $2 million. The top five players on the men’s team make six times as much as the top five players on the women’s team. It’s not fair, and it needs to change.
LUCI DOHERTY 
AGE 15