Guest Column: My Story With Marta

In our first guest column, we feature longtime CLUBELEVEN contributor Cassidy Hettesheimer, who drove all the way to Kansas City to cover history. After seeing Marta lift her first NWSL trophy, Cassidy reflects on what it’s meant to report the last few years of this icon’s career (on assignment at the 2023 World Cup + here in the NWSL) and how it’s impacted her trajectory as a journalist.

[Words and images by Cassidy Hettesheimer]

On the morning of the National Women’s Soccer League championship in Kansas City, I stood on the track of a high school football stadium.

It was the first real cold snap of the year, late November, and to my surprise, the gates were unlocked. So, hands in my pockets, I stared at the hurdles, the turf, the empty stands. 

Shawnee Mission District Stadium is a perfectly satisfactory high school stadium. When I’m not moonlighting as a soccer journalist, I’m a full-time prep sports reporter for The Minnesota Star Tribune. I’d consider myself somewhat of an expert on high school football venues.

It’s not the kind of place that you’d expect World Cup champions to be playing.

Almost 7,000 fans packed into Shawnee Mission District Stadium for the inaugural National Women’s Soccer League match back in 2013. Kansas City hosted the Seattle Reign, with U.S. stars like Lauren Holiday, Megan Rapinoe, and Becky Sauerbrunn playing passes over hash marks and endzones.

Over a decade later — and just over 10 miles away on the banks of the Missouri River — sits the much-celebrated CPKC Stadium, now home of the Kansas City Current. Sitting 11,500 and hungry for expansion, the stadium is the first purpose-built for a women’s sports team and played host to Saturday’s 12th NWSL championship, which the Orlando Pride won 1-0 over the Washington Spirit. 

“It gives me chills every time I think about it,” a now-retired Holiday said. “When I'm in the stadium, it almost makes me emotional, because this is absolutely incredible. The growth in 10 years is massive.”

The club’s $117-million home is the first thing I saw when I drove across the Missouri River into downtown. Current owners Angie and Chris Long like it that way.

“What we've done cannot be unseen, and once it is out there, it becomes the benchmark that you want to try to meet,” Angie Long said. Money talks: Washington Spirit owner Michele Kang pumped $30 million into U.S. Soccer for girls and women’s soccer development, just last week.

It's less the stadium’s size — small, relative to other league venues — and more its exclusiveness that makes it a milestone. Each poster in the concourse and souvenir cup at the concession stands is Current themed, no jockeying for space with a men’s side. 

NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman has stated that training and matchday facilities are a major priority for the league’s soon-to-be-announced 16th club, which will find a home in either Cleveland, Cincinnati, or Denver.

But a venue’s story is only as good as the match that goes on inside, right? 

The Magnificence of Marta

Back in “j-school,” us journalism students were taught to limit personal perspective from most of our coverage. 

No fluffy adjectives, no singing the praises of a player. Let statistics, anecdotes and others’ quotes do the talking, rather than our own emotions.

This comes easy, relatively. The sports fandom has mostly been squeezed out of me. I’ve covered the likes of Simone Biles and Christine Sinclair. After a competition, when a rope separates the reporters from the athletes in a mixed zone, or an athlete is seated behind a table at a press conference — they’re human, like anyone.

Last year, I had the once-in-a-lifetime (though, ideally not just once) chance to work in the media at the Women’s World Cup. Based in Melbourne, Australia, I was one of a gaggle of reporters rushing to write a game story after a scoreless group-stage draw sent Jamaica through to their first-ever knockout stage and stunned an ousted Brazil.

It was Brazil’s earliest exit since 1995.

Cameras and microphones gravitated toward midfielder Marta, the six-time FIFA women’s player of the year at her sixth World Cup. As a superstar, win or lose, the reporters want to talk to you. 

When Marta has a message, she looks straight into the camera. She did so at the 2019 World Cup, and again in 2023, calling on continued interest in women’s football, even though it was her final go at the tournament, then age 37.

“For them, it's just the beginning,” Marta said, pointing to her younger teammates.

"When I started playing, I didn't have an idol, a female idol. You guys didn't show any female games," she said in Portuguese. At a pre-match press conference in Melbourne, she pointed to us, the media. I had yet to turn two when she debuted for the national team, but I understood her point. You, the people controlling the narrative. 

"How was I supposed to see other players? How was I supposed to understand that I could arrive at a national team and become a reference?" she said.

That was, perhaps, the most emotionally moved I’d been by a routine press conference. Later, when I saw a video circulating online of the soundbite, I thought about how wild it was that I was there, in that room, as it was being delivered.

This past Friday, I was seated across from Marta, again, ahead of her first National Women’s Soccer League final. 

After a successful stint playing club in Sweden, the crafty Brazilian midfielder jumped back stateside in 2017. She’d played in now-folded iterations of American women’s pro leagues before. This time, she joined the Orlando Pride, an expansion club entering its second NWSL season.

And while Marta was regarded as the best in the game, the Pride was certainly not.

Uniquely Americanized guardrails — like a club salary cap and the now-extinct college draft — give even the worst NWSL teams chances to acquire top players in a way that out-resourced clubs at the bottom of the Women’s Super League and La Liga might not.

But for a few years, the Pride even seemed immune to those antidotes.

Orlando was unable to get talented puzzle pieces to click consistently. Prior to 2024, the club qualified for the playoffs just once, routinely finishing near the bottom of the league table.

“When I first got here, things were not the greatest, to say the least,” defender and captain Kylie Strom said. “To kind of transform from that to where we are now is incredible… I think we do carry a bit of that underdog mentality still with us.”

Marta stuck around as Orlando’s fortune changed. 

This year, the Pride strung together not just its best season, but the best season in league history. A league-first 23-match unbeaten streak propelled the squad to a record 60-point season in its second full year under the direction of 36-year-old former Orlando City SC centerback Seb Hines, who worked his way up from volunteer to head coach.

“You don’t rebuild something overnight,” defender Ally Watt said. “You build a foundation, and we built a really sturdy foundation last year.”

Zambian forward Barbra Banda and all 17 of her goals were a welcome boost for the Pride’s counterattack and earned the fleet-footed 24-year-old forward an MVP finalist nod. She was one of several young African players to make an immediate impact after joining the NWSL this year, alongside the Current’s league MVP Temwa Chawinga and Washington’s Rosemonde Kouassi.

Marta even admitted keeping up with Banda’s speed as the Pride streaked toward goal was a new challenge for a player who has, surely, seen it all. 

So, before Saturday's final, when asked how this match ranked among the biggest she’s played in, Marta raised her pointer finger: number one. Not any of her World Cup matches? Not the Olympic final she lost to the U.S., just this August?

Nope. 

“I just have a feeling that I'm not done with this club,” Marta said. “I don't want to come and play a couple of years and then leave the club without a good impact.”

“Every single year I ask myself why I'm still here, why I'm still here, why I'm still here,” she added. “Maybe this year gives me the answer that I'm looking for there. Because I need to be here to play the championship with this group, to enjoy this amazing season that we did, make a big impact with a nice group of players.”

Matchday Magic

Orlando didn’t exactly roll into Kansas City on great terms with Current fans. The Pride had handed Kansas City its first loss of the season 16 matches in, with Marta celebrating by “rocking the baby” to the home crowd. A zinger, especially, for a fan base that loves a good “K-C, baby,” chant. 

Then, Orlando knocked the Current out in the semifinals — a 3-2 win punctuated by Marta carrying the ball from midfield to juke out two defenders and the keeper before slotting the ball home.

Such a goal had reporters asking if Marta had given thought to the logistics of whether, if the votes tallied in her favor, she could present herself with the global award for best goal of the year. The women’s version will carry her name this year, and she’s tabbed to present the award.

Award committees, take note: Only name an award after a player once they retire.

Either way: It wasn’t exactly a surprise that, between the traveling Spirit fans and an audience decked in teal KC gear, a larger portion of the sold-out CPKC Stadium was pulling for Washington. 

On paper, those supporters should have been pleased. Washington outshot Orlando, 26-9, and held 58% of possession. 

But the Orlando backline “bent, but didn’t break,” Strom put it. Pride defenders forced shots wide — with a little help from the post, as a header from the Spirit’s Ashley Hatch nearly found the back of the net in first-half stoppage time.

And Pride made one of its few chances count, with Banda taking on the Spirit backline and tucking a shot near-post in a counter sprung by Angelina in the 39th minute.

But a replay revealed physical jockeying from Angelina before the assist, pushing both hands off of the Spirit’s Leicy Santos. The goal stood under VAR review but didn’t win the referees any favors from the pro-Spirit crowd. The officials again held their whistles through a chippy second-half stoppage time, hesitant to give the Spirit any free kicks around the 18-yard box.

"I think (the official) was a lot more receptive to hearing the Orlando Pride talk than us," Spirit forward and U.S. star Trinity Rodman said afterward. "A ref's going to do what they're going to do, but I don't think she was as open to hearing what we had to say."

When a player collapses to their knees after the final whistle, and all of their teammates flock toward them with no hesitation — the image says more than any words could. Messi, at the 2022 World Cup with Argentina. And now Marta, on Saturday.

“Yes, Marta is our fearless leader, but I also don’t think people understand how much passion she has for soccer,” Watt said. “I swear, it’s her essence.”

“Soccer is our job, right? We get to a part where you drag it out a little bit. It gets heavy… But when you look at Marta play, she reignites the childhood love I have for soccer again.”

The Pride supporters section was tucked in the northeast corner of the stadium, and they made sure to chant for Hines and general manager Haley Carter, the architects of the Pride’s renaissance. The fans had waited — or, more aptly, weathered — nine seasons with the club.

This was now my fourth National Women’s Soccer League championship, and so I was no longer taken aback by the rush of players’ family and friends pouring onto the field as the Pride pulled on championship t-shirts and took turns parading around with the trophy lifted in the air. Someone brought out the Shield, and Orlando raised both in front of its fans. 

“Our firstborn,” Watt said, holding the Shield. Don’t forget about it.

Marta’s mom had traveled to the United States for the first time, and they embraced on the field after the match.

“I have an ambition to try to improve every single day,” Marta said. “And still have the same passion that I had when I was 17, 18, years old, try to love this game more than anything.”

After a championship, the winning team’s press conference is always a funny dichotomy — part happy to bask in the feat they accomplished, part itching to quickly move on to the afterparty. In this case, Marta and Banda were no different, as the door to the media room shook with the happy yells of their teammates outside.

But when asked to philosophize about the impact of this, the effect of that, players are typically gracious with their time. It is my opinion, not tabulated fact, that female athletes are asked for this philosophizing more than their male counterparts — about a new stadium, about viewership growth, about attendance, and visibility. It is part of the narrative of growth, one that legends are asked to give a voice to.

“I think this is the best gift,” Banda said. “I've been looking up to (Marta). She's a legend, and I'm learning different kinds of skills each and every day. So I'm very honored, because she's more like my sister.”

I ended my day the same way I started it: in a stadium’s almost-empty parking lot. Most other cars had left by the time press conferences wrapped up. On a nearby railroad, a train thundered and groaned as it rumbled by. 

Phone out, my gaze down, I nearly ran into the match MVP.

Banda emerged from the stadium, en route to the team shuttle with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a plate of post-game fuel in the other. Shortly behind her was Pride and Zambian teammate Grace Chanda, toting Banda’s championship MVP trophy, hustling toward the bus.

I lurched to a halt and let them pass. 

As I tossed my camera bag and laptop into my car, ready for the night ahead — writing this, editing photos, stopping by Taco Bell — I thought back to Marta’s speech. Okay, I’ve got to be more specific; she’s got a couple of those, in English, Portuguese, or Swedish… take your pick.

I thought back to the one that she gave prior to her last World Cup game, translated on delay from Portuguese to English in my earbuds via FIFA’s translation app.

"How was I supposed to see other players? How was I supposed to understand that I could arrive at a national team and become a reference?"

Her home country will host the next Women’s World Cup in 2027, and though she doesn’t plan to be on the field, her presence will be felt in the nation’s tradition of football fervor. She and the Pride won Orlando its first professional sports championship on a national TV broadcast, in a stadium — a stage — custom-built for women’s soccer. 

Marta has said she’d like to play two more years professionally. I hope I’ll be covering women’s sports, soccer or otherwise, much longer than that. But sometimes, it can become easy to fixate on deadlines, or comparing my work to others, or what opportunities I’ve yet to have.

But watching someone care so deeply about playing soccer, like Watt said about Marta — it becomes easier to instead think about why I love the game, why I started playing when I was young, and how lucky I am to be riding this train at this moment in time. 

How lucky I am to sit alongside other media professionals doing work that I look up to — a reference, like Marta said. Many of these journalists have played the long game covering women’s soccer, like Marta with the Pride, sticking with it even when their work might have been overlooked because of its topic, not its quality.

So apologies, journalism school — I’ll take the space in this newsletter to be a little more sentimental than I typically am, in hopes that others might feel just as lucky to witness this history, and just as excited about what it means for the future.

Maybe one day, we’ll be at a larger stadium, pondering Rodman or Banda’s legacy, and 11,500 will feel quaint.