BBC Women's Footballer of the Year 2018: Pernille Harder profile

We are profiling each of the five nominees for the BBC Women's Footballer of the Year 2018 award. Voting has now closed but you can see all the contenders' profiles and read full terms here. The winner will be revealed on Tuesday, 22 May during Sport Today on BBC World Service from 18:30 GMT (19:30 BST), on BBC World News and on the BBC Sport website.

Age: 25 Position: Forward Plays for: VfL Wolfsburg and Denmark

Snapshot of 2017: Helped Wolfsburg win the Bundesliga and German Cup, captained Denmark to runners-up spot at Euro 2017

Did you know?

• Harder was named Women's World Player of the Year in the inaugural female version of the Goal 50 award in 2017 and has won Denmark's Player of the Year award for the past three years

• She made her international debut aged 16 in 2009, scoring a hat-trick in Denmark's 15-0 win over Georgia

• After 15 games in this season's Bundesliga, Harder was top scorer with 14 goals - four more than her nearest rival

• Away from football, she enjoys playing golf

Pernille Harder helped VfL Wolfsburg win the Bundesliga and German Cup last season

Being nominated

"It's an honour. A nomination like this is one of the things you work really hard for your whole career, so I'm really happy to be nominated and 2017 was a really good year for me."

In her own words: Titles, idols & Beckham

There were a lot of highlights for me in 2017 - for Wolfsburg it was winning two titles, the League and the Cup - for Denmark it was really big for the nation for us to get to the final of the Euros.

It was just amazing and the way the Danish population suddenly knew about us - almost the whole of Denmark was cheering for us in the final.

Scoring a goal in the final was a big moment for me, I hoped it would turn the game for us but unfortunately it didn't.

I'm really happy to see all the girls who start to look up to us and want to be a Pernille Harder or someone instead of being Lionel Messi.

Harder is second on Denmark women's top goal-scorer list with 51

It's really nice that we can be their idols now so it's nice to see the development in women's football, that girls can have us women as idols instead of only the men.

I hope it will keep on developing so that the facilities that boys can get at a young age the girls can also get.

I started playing football when I was six years old with the boys in the little city where I come from [Ikast], my Mum and Dad both played and so did my sister so they sent me to play soccer and I really loved it.

They didn't have a girls team until I was 11 years old but I played and practised with boys in high school and that was a really important part of my development.

I've always been a Manchester United fan, my Dad turned me into one and I've always followed them! David Beckham was my footballing inspiration - he was an amazing player.