The Group of Death has served its name: the Danish team, with their dangerous counterattacks and overwhelming fan presence, departed just too soon. For 34-years-old Dr Nadia Nadim, it was probably the last Euro. Having played a crucial role in her national team, Nadim has already earned her place in history as one of the greatest Danish footballers of all time. Coming from “the place where dreams are not allowed”, Nadia teaches us to dream big, to live with passion, and never to let anyone decide for us what we can and what we cannot do.
Tragic but inspiring
You don’t need to be a good storyteller to make Nadia’s journey sound inspiring. After losing her father when she was 11 years old, Nadia fled war-torn Afghanistan with her mother and four sisters. The initial goal was England but by a mysterious turn of circumstances, the family landed in Denmark. There, in the Danish asylum centre, Nadia started to play football, – the game she could never have dreamed of playing in Afghanistan.
Nadia’s footballing career has been nothing short of successful. She has 103 caps and more than 200 goals for Denmark, with whom she won the last Euro’s silver. Her club record is no less impressive. Among her former clubs, there are big names such as Sky Blue FC, Portland Thorns FC, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain. Her list of club achievements includes winning the 2016 NWSL Shield and 2017 NWSL Championship with Portland, the French league with PSG in 2021, and being her clubs’ top scorer on numerous occasions.
Nadia’s achievements are not limited to sports. Apart from being a great footballer, she is a qualified reconstructive surgeon, who also happens to speak nine languages (Danish, English, German, Persian, Dari, Urdu, Hindi, Arabic and French). Starting in a foreign country as an Afghan refugee, she was voted to become the Dane of the year 2017 for her off-the-field humanitarian work in promoting education, gender equality and helping other refugees around the world. In 2018, Nadia was ranked No. 20 on the Forbes’ “Most Powerful Women in International Sports” list.
What doesn’t kill you…
As a child in a war-torn country, and then as a displaced refugee, Nadia’s childhood was marked by trauma and challenges that few other professional athletes have experienced, the ones that break you or make you. In her case, it was the second option. Nadia confesses that despite being only 32 [at the time of this conversation], she feels like she has experienced “a lot more, like 200 years of life, in bad ways and good ways.”
Having faced poverty and deprivation growing up, Nadia has developed an ambitious, goal-oriented mindset and a passionate personality. It was always clear that she would never settle for anything less than success, and she was never looking for easy ways to achieve it. When she had to choose who she wanted to become, a footballer or a doctor, she chose to become both. It’s not uncommon for female footballers to study while playing professionally, but not many opt for medical training, which is difficult to complete even if one gives it 100% of focus.
Having spent a considerable portion of her childhood playing football with boys at the asylum centre added to Nadia’s natural athleticism and competitive spirit. One of the first of her coaches and mentors, Brian Sørensen, described Nadia as a player with a big personality, a lot of energy and a passion for the game that wasn’t typical of other girls her trained. By shaping her as a person, these experiences have also affected Nadia’s style of play. She brings a lot of fire, determination and intensity into the game. Her teammates say, that one can tell what she’s been through by simply watching her play.
Impact on the game
With more than 200 goals scored, Nadia’s impact on Denmark’s performance is hard to oversee. Had it not been for her, we most probably wouldn’t have seen Denmark at this Euro. It was Nadia, who scored two crucial goals in Denmark’s 3–1 win over Italy in Florence, which secured her country a spot in the Euro 2022. At Euro 2017, she scored the equaliser against Germany, playing a crucial role in bringing Denmark to the final.
Being a very deceitful and energetic attacker, Nadia is often trusted with penalties, and she hardly ever fails to convert them. She scored both her penalties at Euro 2017 and her only penalty that was saved by the goalkeeper in the NWSL immediately went in on the rebound. Still, Nadia admits that she does not measure her footballing success by the number of goals she scores or trophies she wins. What matters to her most is to be making a positive impact on her team.
Changing the narrative
Being a girl in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Nadia had no right to go to school and to go outside without male supervision, let alone to play football professionally. She calls her homeland “the place where dreams are not allowed”. In her new home, Denmark, dreams were not served to her on a silver platter either, but her right to fight for them was guaranteed by the law.
As an Afghan refugee who wanted to become a professional footballer and doctor, Nadia had to overcome not only numerous bureaucratic hurdles of the Danish community but also the resistance of local Afghans. The former had a problem with Nadia trying to combine sports and medical training – something unheard of in the Danish education system with tight deadlines and demanding exams. For the latter, the fact that an Afghan woman was playing “men’s sport” was a problem in itself.
Nadia’s persistence in chasing her dreams made both groups reconsider their views on what she could and what she couldn’t do. Her successful career as a footballer did not prevent her from graduating as a doctor in January 2022, and after constant positive attention in the media, local Afghans gradually changed their strong opinions and started to be proud of Nadia’s football achievements. Nadia has triggered a big change in the attitudes of the entire Afghan community in Denmark. People began to tell her how inspiring her example was and that they now wanted their own daughters to become footballers.
“I felt positive. I felt I had achieved something outside of football. I changed views about what girls can and cannot do and that meant a lot at the time.”
When sharing her story in her TED Talk (and of course, she has given a TED Talk), Nadia sums up her main message in the following way: no matter who you are, be it a woman, a refugee, or even both, no one has the right to tell us what we can and what we cannot do.
Written by Olesia Andersen
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