Insights, stories, and perspectives from our team.
The bus can barely move. The streets around the stadium are packed with fans. They press up against the windows, phones out, waving flags, calling out names. Police escorts clear a path to the gates. Inside, the stands are nearly sold out for a friendly between El Salvador and Costa Rica. When the players step off the bus, people reach out for photos and autographs like the team is made of movie stars.
Yaz Jallad
The way Roma became a goalkeeper is that she needed to help out the defenders in front of her. She was seven. Shy. The kind of kid who kept to herself at her first soccer sessions and let the louder ones run the show. She just kept drifting deeper on the field, back, back, back, until the coaches realized what was happening and put her in net.
Yaz Jallad
The first thing you need to know about Mia Pocrnić is that this was always going to happen. Her father Steve has been playing soccer his entire life and still hasn't stopped. He is pushing sixty. Her grandfathers grew up playing the game in Croatia. Her brother Neven now lives there, playing for NK Lokomotiva in the Croatian Division 1.
Yaz Jallad
The first goal Wizaso Chavula ever scored, he didn't know whose team he was on. He was six years old, in Malawi, where he was born and raised. His older brother, maybe ten at the time, would walk him down the street to where the neighbourhood kids gathered.
Yaz Jallad
In the spring of grade six, just after Ruby Ambardar made the Fusion FC BCSPL team, the world locked down.
Yaz Jallad
The last time we wrote about Naomie Gosal, we said she was uncommitted, patient, and following her gut.
Yaz Jallad
Ben Bradshaw's first memory of soccer has nothing to do with a save, a goal, or even a ball. He was five years old, lined up with every other kid on his team, and the coach went down the row checking that everyone's shoes were tied.
Yaz Jallad
Paige Morris's mom remembers the moment it happened. One day the walls of her room were covered in gymnastics posters. A couple of weeks later, every single one was gone. In their place: soccer posters, her dad's photos, a completely different world pinned up above her bed.
Yaz Jallad
Bennett Gosal is older than his twin sister Naomie by one minute. He brings it up constantly. She gets mad every time.
Yaz Jallad
Forward, UTSA NCAA D1
CAM, UBC Soccer, Altitude FC
