Golden dress, white shoes with stiletto heels, her long black hair tied in a bun, Nadia Nadim is sitting in the back of a taxi. In front of her, her agent reads the comments that fall on social networks. The tense face, the Danish international listens. She tries to suppress tears, then she explodes: “Do you really think that the World Cup in Qatar is not going to take place if I am not an ambassador? Are you stupid? ! » The taxi stops. The footballer disappears in the night of Doha.
These images, filmed on 1er April 2022, are part of a documentary titled Nadia Nadim. Game Changer? broadcast on November 16, on the Nordic platform Viaplay. Originally, the film was to follow the young woman during her recovery after knee surgery, in September 2021, until the European football championships, in July 2022, in England. Soon enough, the directors changed the subject, to try to understand why an icon such as Nadia Nadim was putting her image on the line, by associating herself with the most controversial World Cup in football history.
The 34-year-old former PSG striker, who has been playing for Racing Louisville in the United States since 2021, announced the news while in Doha to attend the draw for the most popular sporting competition. watched in the world. “It is a great honor to announce that I am an official ambassador for the 2022 World Cup,” she wrote on 1er April on her Instagram account, where she is followed by 270,000 followers. She posts a photo in official dress, a red polo shirt and black pants, next to the trophy, in a Qatari stadium.
Danish Journalists Ask: Is It April Fools ? The rumor, however, had been circulating since December 2021. Nadia Nadim had posted, still on her Instagram account, several photos taken in Doha, during a meeting with volunteers from the Arab Cup of Nations. She posed in particular with the English star David Beckham, handsomely paid by the emirate to play the VRP of his World Cup. In Copenhagen, the tabloids ask: why does Nadia Nadim accept to compromise herself, by advertising a country where thousands of immigrant workers have died and the rights of women and LGBTQ + people are flouted? ?
Naturalized in Denmark
Because Nadia Nadim is much more than a footballer. She is a symbol. Born in Herat, Afghanistan, in 1988, she fled the country at the age of 11, with her mother – a teacher – and her four sisters, after the assassination of her father, a general in the Afghan army, by the Taliban. They passed through Pakistan, then took a plane to Italy with false papers, before boarding a truck which was to take them to England, but took them… to Denmark.
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