LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – The crowd was on its feet long before Nadia Nadim entered the game. As she stood on the sideline awaiting the substitution that would bring her back into professional football after a 10-month period of triumph and tragedy, her face appeared on the video screen, the cheers rang out, and life and football were set to resume again.
Long before the Ted Lasso character Danny Rojas popularized the phrase, “football is life,” the two have been exquisitely intertwined for Nadim.
It was football – a sport she knew nothing of when she escaped her native Afghanistan at age 12 -- that helped lift her out of a refugee camp in Denmark to the heights of the World Cup. Through football, she became captain of the national team and a hero in her adopted country. Through the game, she became a league champion in the U.S. with Portland and in France with Paris Saint-Germain. Through football, she became an advocate for refugees around the world.
And over the past year, football helped to save her again. It wasn’t just returning from an ACL tear that sidelined her last September – her second ACL tear in a year. Had she only needed to deal with that Nadim would’ve been happy. But there was more.
Her mother, Hamida, was a real-life hero. After her husband was executed by the Taliban in 2000, she gathered all her resources, sold most of the family’s possessions, and built a plan to get herself and her four daughters out of the country. They left home under the cover of night, hid in an apartment near the Pakistan border, completely cut off from the outside world, waiting for their chance to escape. Hamida turned down several chances to break up her family and leave separately before an offer came to smuggle them all out together.
Nadia Nadim returns to the pitch after an 10-month injury absence during Racing Louisville's 2-1 win over Kansas City Friday night.
Passports were forged. Airport officials were bribed. And soon the family was on a plane to Italy. Then in the back of a truck they thought was headed for London, instead they were unloaded, starving and exhausted, in Denmark.
Next to their refugee camp stood a gleaming soccer complex, and for young Nadia, a dream was born. If not for the courage of a mother determined to make a better life for her daughters, none of it would have happened.
And now this. Two days before Thanksgiving last year, Nadim was on television, working as an analyst on ITV’s World Cup coverage from Qatar. While on the air, she got the news that her mother had been struck by a car and killed on her way home from the gym near her home of Uldum, Denmark.
Nadim left the broadcast, left the country. Her mother, 57, had gone to the gym early that day and was hurrying home to see her daughter on television. Nadim was crushed.
“She was my teacher, my friend, my father, my mother, my mentor and someone who always inspired me to be me and fight for what I believe in,” Nadim said. “. . . She gave me life in many ways.”
A week later, Nadim was back on TV.
“She raised us to be strong and we’re showing how to be strong,” Nadim said on her first broadcast back. “I want to make her proud and I know she wanted me to be here.”
During her injury, of course, Nadim did not waste time. The 35-year-old worked tirelessly to rehab. She furthered her medical studies and practice. She began to learn Spanish, a 12th language for her. She worked in television. She launched her own study of knee injuries in women athletes, and discussed it in an interview on CNN. She became a partner in several high-profile business ventures, particularly the fitness-based H&M Move. She was the subject of an international documentary on her life, “Gamechanger.”
She was pushing to get back in time to play for Denmark in the World Cup. She didn’t quite make that target. Still, she said after finally making it back onto the pitch competitively Friday night in Louisville, “What a day to be alive. Words cannot express what I was feeling.”
And again, she said football played a key role.
“It was a hard one,” she said, after Tyler Greever asked her how difficult this comeback has been. “Injuries are a part of football, but with everything happening, everything with my mom, it was really, really hard.”
Nadim then fought back some tears through the rest of her answer.
“It was really, really hard, and not having football, which has always been my outlet, how I cope with everything, was extremely hard. I had days where I was miserable. I’m not going to lie. But I guess, I somewhere read, ‘It’s not about how you fall, it’s about how you get up again.’ And I think that’s kind of my life story. I’ve been getting hit so many times and I just refuse to lay down. And I guess this is another one of them. I feel almost invincible at this point. I don’t know what’s going to take me down. Yeah, it was hard. But I also feel that football kind of saved me again. This is my second time. If I didn’t have football or going to the gym, and having this outlet, I would go crazy with everything happening the last 9 months. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be this emotional. But I’m human.”
Take a minute. Find your tissues. Whatever you need.
Nadim bounced onto the field with 12 minutes to play to resume a career that has spanned 17 years, nearly fashioning a storybook return on a shot that went just wide shortly after.
Racing Louisville FC's Nadia Nadim, a licensed doctor, speaks to injured teammate Parker Goins during Friday's win over Kansas City.
But there was another telling moment. A teammate, Parker Goins, collided with the opposing goalkeeper in the box and immediately fell to the pitch, and stayed there. As the referee called for trainers, Goins already had a doctor hovering over her.
Nadim was there, speaking to her teammate, quickly examining and assessing. It’s as if she immediately went into physician mode. Her specialty is reconstructive surgery, but she was immediately able to attend to an injured teammate. You don’t see that every day. Nor do you see a person this accomplished every day.
Asked how he thought Nadim had played in her first minutes back, Racing coach Kim Björkegren said it didn’t matter.
“I think the most important thing was to see her back on the pitch,” he said. “It was maybe not so important in what she did. She was really close to scoring a goal, but the most important thing is that she's back.”
With the emotions of her return behind her, Nadim said she’s looking forward to returning to a playoff contender. The club pulled within one point of a playoff spot on Friday, and has been steadily improving as the season has progressed.
“Obviously I’m really grateful for the opportunity again and grateful for the help and support that I've gotten from my teammates, the staff, everyone around Racing Louisville, all the fans, it’s incredible,” Nadim said. “I'm looking forward to getting in better shape and then you know, being a game changer. I think we've been playing really well. Tonight was one of those days and I’m so, so glad that we got the three points and I'm happy, happy for the girls. And happy for my own sake, being back on the field feels amazing. This is what I love, playing football. So yeah, emotional and excited.”
“It's been nice to see the team doing so well,” Nadim said. “Defensively, we seem very compact, you know, and then Abby (Erceg) and Carson (Pickett), especially in the backline they've added so much quality to our team in general. And with the midfielders we have now, some of them gone for the World Cup, the way we play, I love it. We create so many chances and I think I'll probably help when we get going to kind of capitalize on those chances. I've been loving the way we play. We just have to now be more decisive in both boxes, you know, kill the games, as we kind of did today. And yeah, we’re going be a hard team to beat, and a team to watch for in the end of the season.”
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