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As Good As It Gets
This Is As Good As It Gets!
by Jeremy Ruane
The world's most capped international, Kristine Lilly (USA). Current FIFA Women's Player of the Year, Marta (Brazil). Three-time FIFA Women's Player of the Year, Birgit Prinz (Germany). Some of the biggest names in women's soccer right now.
They're among sixteen players named in a FIFA Women's World Stars squad which will play China in Wuhan on April 21, the hors d'oeuvres to the draw for the 2007 FIFA Women's World Cup Finals, which will be made the next day.
Alongside them will be a galaxy of stars from the Asian, African, European and North American nations … and, for the first time ever in a women's squad of this nature, New Zealand.
“I haven't got my head around the enormity of it!”, said excited New Zealand women's international Maia Jackman of her selection in this all-star cast some twenty-four hours after learning of it. “I haven't come down off the clouds yet - I'm absolutely stoked!!”
As well she should be. Being selected for your country is regarded by many as the ultimate honour, and rightly so, but to be selected for a team comprising the crème de la crème of the world game … as Wynton Rufer, the only other New Zealand soccer star to be chosen for a FIFA All Stars squad (in 1999), can testify, this is as good as it gets!
“I don't know when it will sink in”, says the Whangarei native of this latest - and greatest - addition to a footballing CV to die for, one which includes the captaincy of her country, and being the first player in the history of New Zealand soccer to score hat-tricks in three consecutive full internationals, a feat few players in world football get to achieve.
“I hope I can do my country proud”, says the thirty-one-year-old, who wasn't able to break the news to her mother - “my biggest fan” - until Saturday afternoon. “There were a few tears shed”, she proudly admits. “It's such a huge honour”.
Jackman, currently recovering from a knee injury sustained in the Lion Foundation National Women's League Grand Final, found out about her selection from NZ Soccer's Chief Executive Officer, Graham Seatter.
“He rang me on Friday, and I wondered what it was about at first. He asked how my knee was progressing, mentioned Wuhan and April, then read out a list of names, and we agreed there were some great players on the list.
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“Then he said, `By the way, there's one more name here. Yours. Are you available?' I'm like, `Am I ever!!' One thing's for sure, it makes up for not going to Australia next week!”
Jackman's injury-enforced absence breaks a nineteen-match sequence of appearances for her country, dating back to October 1998, when she sat out a Women's World Cup qualifying encounter against Fiji.
The twenty-nine-times-capped international is disappointed she won't get to take on the old enemy in Canberra next Sunday and on Waitangi Day, but knows that the bigger picture is of far greater importance.
“We've a training camp coming up in mid-March, leading into the Oceania Women's World Cup qualifying tournament in Papua New Guinea at the beginning of April. Being fit for that, and the subsequent fixtures which are planned providing we qualify for September's Women's World Cup Finals in China, as well as for the finals themselves, is far more important.
“It's long been my intention to retire from international football after the 2008 Olympic Games”, says the former Chinese Women's Super League professional, “so this will be my last chance to play in a World Cup Finals tournament. It's one I've no intention of missing”.
Jackman, who has been a finalist for the New Zealand International Women's Player of the Year award in five of the past seven seasons, will, this season, embrace a new challenge by playing in the colours of Western Springs.
That is, of course, in between international engagements, including the biggest of the lot - the FIFA Women's World Stars squad, or, as it's described in FIFA's media release, a “dream team”.
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