Sara Gama leaves the national team: the end of an era in Italian women's football

Every trip brings with it the gift of a memory. Sara Gama At the age of 35 – he turns 35 on March 27 – he leaves the national team. Italy's best-known footballer stops. Nothing blue in her future. “It was an extraordinary journey.” Eighteen years of journey are a lifetime, 139 appearances are an indelible trace. But there's more: for years Gama was the face of the national team. And she was the moment the women's movement began to emerge from the perimeter of her garden. Claiming rights, conquering goals.

«I have given everything», he said, «In almost twenty years I have given my contribution to laying solid foundations for the future and transmitting the right values ​​to a group that has once again demonstrated its great potential». She was important on the pitch, she was just as important off it. She indicated a horizon, she set out to reach it, accompanied by many other girls who later became women of her generation. «I used my body and my mind to play. I also used them to talk and try to inspire, on and off the pitch. Today I can say that some of these words and gestures have helped”.

He kicked the ball, he kicked prejudices. Daughter of a Congolese father and a Trieste mother, the beginning of the story in Trieste, the games on the seafront with the Barcolana Topolini, the only girl in a jungle of males who at a certain point, after looking at her with suspicion, began to encourage her . She has always been accompanied by a strong sense of responsibility. Football, but not only. Graduated in Foreign Languages ​​and Literatures at the University of Udine, she speaks four languages ​​(in addition to Italian, also English, French and Spanish), she has always been driven by the desire to learn more, to inform herself, to know. Her popularity reached its peak when Mattel decided to pay homage to her by creating a Barbie with her features. The slogan that accompanied him told a lot about his way of being in the world: «A determination capable of inspiring every little girl to always pursue their dreams».

Sara Gama made her blue debut in 2006, at just nineteen years old, then played four European Championships (2009, 2013, 2017 and 2022) and a World Cup, the historic one – since qualification had been missing for twenty years – of 2019. In 2008 he won the European Championships with the Under 19 national team, the only trophy won by an Italian women's national team. Elegant in her gait, equipped with excellent technical qualities, she is astute in reading the various game situations: a defender from another era, who makes personality the pedestal of her career. Because her career continues. With the Juventus shirt, the club for which she has been a member since 2017. Her last match will be on Friday at Viola Park against Ireland, decided by mutual agreement with coach Andrea Soncin, to reach the round figure: 140 appearances and a place honor in the history of Italian women's football.