Queen Marta and Orlando Pride Champions: Pure Icing On The Cake

If you were lucky enough to witness Marta’s glorious goal that crushed the Kansas City Current in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) semifinal, you now know why “The Queen” was named the FIFA Player of the Year on six separate occasions. If you saw Queen Marta slalom past four hapless K.C. defenders (to rival some of the best-ever solo goals scored by the likes of Maradona, Pelé, and Ronaldo The Phenomenon) on November 17, 2024, you also realize why the Orlando Pride is the solid favorite to beat the Washington Spirit in the NWSL Final this coming Saturday night.

Barbra Banda did the heavy lifting for Orlando, first scoring and then knocking the ball away from a Current defender who foolishly tried to dribble out of trouble deep in the Kansas City end in a tight semifinal match. Queen Marta pounced on the loose ball, and the rest is history.

Two K.C. markers, Alana Cook and Kayla Sharples, both simultaneously dove for the same cool Marta fake before the legend danced past goalkeeper Almuth Schult. Suffice to say: if you knew how far Marta had come from her impoverished home in Brazil’s northeastern state of Alagoas, you’d be forgiven for shedding a tear or two. Her father left, never to return, when she was but a baby.

Great K.C. Current Season, Until They Faced Orlando

Yet, the Current didn’t have a bad season by any means, at least until they ran into that fierce Pride of Lionesses led by Queen Marta, Zambian international Banda, Ally “Lightning” Watt, and a number of extremely hungry Orlando players. Sunday’s loss snapped the Current’s 10-game unbeaten run, bringing Kansas City’s 2024 season to an abrupt end.

Despite the defeat, the K.C. club had a history-making campaign, on and off the field. The franchise opened the first stadium in the world which was purpose-built for a women’s pro sports team in March, and then racked up single-season club records in wins (16), total points (55), shutouts (9), while breaking an NWSL record for total goals in one campaign (57), and taking home both the NWSL x Liga MX Femenil Summer Cup and The Women’s Cup.

The Current’s sparkling stadium was also chosen to host the NWSL Final on November 23.  As the NWSL commissioner, Jessica Berman, said: “It was a natural choice to stage the league’s marquee event in a venue that exemplifies the profound impact of infrastructure, investment, and community support on the continued development and success of our sport.” The 11,500-capacity stadium sold out every single regular-season game and is a cinch to do so for the final, despite the cruel fact that the K.C. team was knocked out in the semis.

Kansas City’s robust attendance reflects healthy league-wide trends. Thanks in part to two new clubs, the Utah Royals and Bay FC, as well as a longer campaign, NWSL’s regular-season attendance nudged past two million for the first time ever. In 2023, NWSL became the first women’s league in the world to average 10,000 per game. This year, the average was more than 11,000, with 89 regular season games drawing more than 10,000 fans (a significant increase from 55 in 2023), according to The Guardian.

How Far Have You Come, Queen Marta?

Marta once wrote a letter to her former self (in this case, a raw 14-year-old), as reported by theplayerstribune.com. The gist of the letter was Marta telling herself again and again to “get on the bus.” It was to reassure her much younger self that if she could just muster the courage to leave her challenged surroundings, and take what at that time was practically an around-the-world journey by bus from the backwater of Dois Riachos, Alagoas, to the flashing lights and glittering sands of Rio de Janeiro, she would be well on her way.

That arduous journey would take her from a place where she could play equally with or better than the boys, but she wasn’t allowed to, or at least she was loudly discouraged from doing so for years on end. Yet, that figurative bus ride would finally transport her to faraway lands which offered the best opportunities at the pinnacle of world soccer for women, like Sweden and ultimately the USA.

But the road was always hard and long, and there were many heavy defeats and setbacks and vocal critics, especially in a nation like Brazil where soccer is taken so seriously, and even an Olympic silver medal after a seesaw game versus the world’s best is simply not good enough for many.

“Get on the bus,” Queen Marta forcefully repeated to her younger self.

Now Taste The Icing on Queen Marta’s Cake

Like the Queen herself, the Orlando Pride is a special rags to riches story that will linger on as one of the greatest role reversals in NWSL history. The club wallowed for years, but the legendary 38-year-old Marta persevered. With a rejuvenated team built around her, the Brazilian ace enjoyed one of the finest seasons in recent memory, notching nine regular-season goals.

And after scoring that jaw-dropping and game-breaking goal in last Sunday’s semifinal against K.C., she elaborated on the difference in the team: “It’s mostly about the mentality. We had a really good team in the past too, like big names. But there was some [in the] team who would miss all the time.

“Then this group of people who work every single day so hard. They give everything. They don’t think only about themselves. They think only about the team, to do the things together. We bring this spirit every single game, no matter what,” Queen Marta enthused.

Why did Marta come to Orlando in the first place, and why did she stick it out through thick and thin in Florida for eight years without a trophy?

“I came to Orlando because I want to be close to my country, be close to my friends and family, be able to see them a little bit more often. I came here, and then I met good people. The community: it’s amazing. We have almost everybody from everywhere—Latino, Europe. So I feel so comfortable with this. And I started to visualize my life here in Orlando not just for one or two years, but for a long time,” admitted the Queen.

Enough singing of Orlando’s pleasantries. The job isn’t quite finished yet: there’s a truly tough team called the Washinton Spirit standing in the way. But you can believe that Queen Marta and her crew can already taste their cake.