43-year-old Miraildes Maciel Mota is set to make history once again, this time at the upcoming Olympic Games in Tokyo.
The South American footballer plays for the Brazilian National Soccer Team. When she takes the field against China on Wednesday, she will have competed in all seven women’s Olympic soccer tournaments since the sport was welcomed into the Games in 1996.
Records are not new for the midfielder though.
In 2019, she became the first soccer player, male or female, to play in seven FIFA World Cups. A year later in December of 2020, she was part of the team that beat Ecuador 8-0. That win made her the first South American footballer ever to win 200 international caps.
But the Olympics are on a bigger stage and holds even more weight.
Since 1896, only 31 athletes have participated in seven or more Olympic Games. The overall leader is Canadian show-jumper Ian Millar. Only three women have competed in more Games than Formiga: Canadian Coxswain Lesley Thompson, German/Italian canoeist Josefa Idem and Georgian shooter Nino Salukvadze.
Formiga becomes the eleventh woman to compete in seven Olympics. She’s also the first seven-time Olympian, male or female, in a team sport and, perhaps most importantly to her, the first Brazilian to accomplish these Herculean feats.
For Mota, soccer is life.
She began playing in the streets at the age of 7 and quickly took to the game. Her reputation spread and soon she was training in Sao Paulo. She was ultimately nicknamed Formiga, which means ant in Portuguese, at the age of 13 reportedly because of her small frame and how much she ran around the field.
While the game came quickly to her, support did not, especially from her brothers. She was the only girl out of five children and soccer was not viewed as something girls should do in her hometown of Salvador. Even her friends made excuses not to play with her for fear of being harassed or punished.
“That fear of being of prejudice was always there,” said Mota. “It’s not easy to deal with the harassment, particularly when not only does it come from others, but from inside your own home. That made so many girls give up their dreams.”
But with her mother’s support, and her own determination, Formiga pursued her dreams of playing “the Beautiful Game”.
At the age of 18, Formiga was named as a starter for the Brazilian squad at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. She has held onto that position since then.
Formiga won Olympic silver twice (2004, 2008), but has yet to taste gold. Whether this stands to be that year remains to be seen. But regardless of the outcome, her goal is more than just gold.
“What I most want, and I think everyone knows this, are improvements in our sport so that we can get more respect,” she told ESPN back in 2019.
“What we need to do is win an important tournament like the World Cup or the Olympics. We’ve tried many times and never managed it but we’ll keep trying. Never give up.”
She wants to ensure that future generations of Brazilian women footballers get the opportunity to play. One that’s easier for them than it was for her coming up.
“I don’t want to be remembered as the player who played for so many years, who was at all those Olympic Games and World Cups, but as someone who fought for improvements in women’s soccer in my country,” said Formiga.
Let’s hope the long-tenured, hard-working soccer “ant” can make that happen for the women and girls following in her cleat steps.
