Sara Gama and Rafaelle Souza: Two trailblazers discuss their journeys to top

Rafaelle Souza (left) and Sara Gama have both captained their national teams

Sara Gama and Rafaelle Souza come from very different backgrounds, having grown up on different continents thousands of miles away.

But both fell in love with football from a young age and their shared passion has taken them on unexpected journeys to the top of the women's game.

Gama, 33, captain of Italy and Juventus, and Souza, 31, who plays as a defender for Brazil and Arsenal, tell BBC World Service's The Conversation about their early careers, the shock of getting paid to play and being an inspiration to the next generation.

'I didn't even know there was a national team'

Both Gama and Souza began playing football with boys in the streets where they lived.

"I started playing at about seven but I always played with the boys, barefoot in my small city in Brazil," says Souza.

"At that time I couldn't watch women's football on TV so I didn't realise I could be a professional player because I'd never watched one."

Gama, 33, was also playing with boys when she joined her first official team when she was seven years old, before joining a women's team aged 12.

To both it came as a surprise to be called up by their national youth teams.

"When I was 15 I was playing with the men's team in my city, with adults, and I wasn't used to playing with people my age," says Souza. "When I got the call-up I was in shock."

Rafaelle Souza says playing at the iconic Maracana stadium in Rio at the Olympics is her career highlight

Gama adds: "When I got the call I didn't even know there was a national team because I didn't even see women playing. I'm still there, the national team is part of my life."

If that was a shock, finding out she could get paid to play football by a club in Italy was even more so.

"It was incredible. When I had the meeting with the president [of the football club], they said we're going to give you €100. 'You are going to pay me to play?!' I was very surprised. At my previous club we paid to play.

"It was a dream. It wasn't huge what they paid me but, to me, it was huge."

Striking for women's rights

It was a move abroad that opened the pair's eyes to the potential of the women's game.

Gama's came in 2013, when she made the switch to Paris St-Germain - an "opportunity to experience real professional football full-time".

The club's new owners invested heavily in the women's side as they looked to challenge their compatriots, and European heavyweights, Lyon.

"I started to train during the day," says Gama. "It was quite interesting to me to see a country that's quite similar to Italy, and to see how the football could develop with the right investment and the right attention.

"And I started to get a view of women's football in other countries that were in some cases ahead of us."

When she returned to Italy to play for Brescia in 2015, Gama helped start a revolution that would change the women's game in her country.

During a match for Brescia against Verona she came together with her team-mates, holding a banner for equality saying "some points are worth more than in the table". When the the Italian Football Association didn't respond to their calls for greater professionalism, they threatened to strike before the first game of the season.

"That was a huge turning point for us," she says. "As players we understood that being united was a very important thing and staying together we could push forward our movement."

Sara Gama, top right, says reaching the quarter-finals of the World Cup in 2019 got the attention of the public in Italy and was a big turning point for women's football in the country

Meanwhile, Souza became the first foreign woman to sign for a club in China when she joined Changchun Zhuoyue in 2016.

The opportunity came after she had studied civil engineering in the United States on a football scholarship and played a season for Houston Dash in the National Women's Soccer League.

"I was about to give up playing soccer. I was going to go into engineering because I could make more money than playing football in Brazil.

"Then I got a really good offer to play in China. I decided if I have to stay away from my family it's better to stay away and make money to give them some support.'

"When I got there the culture was really different to anything I'd experienced in my life… I had a translator in China who was like my shadow, he went with me everywhere and he became a really close friend as we spent six years side by side."

Being an inspiration to young girls

Sara Gama gave the Barbie doll made in her image to Juventus' museum

In 2018, for International Women's Day, the toy company Mattel presented the Sara Gama Barbie doll as part of the Sheroes range.

"As you can imagine, when I was a child I used to play with footballs more than with Barbies," says Gama. "So I didn't get at the time what that could mean. But then they explained to me the message of the campaign wasn't just becoming a Barbie - it was that every girl can become whatever she wants."

And Souza, despite not liking the limelight, says she's proud to be an inspiration in her home town of Cipo, in north-east Brazil.

"I'm the [type of] person that doesn't like to be seen," she says.

"People talk about me like I'm one of the best players but I don't see it. I feel like I'm still the same child that I was playing barefoot back then."

But she's happy to represent her community and give others hope. "I came from this place so [perhaps] some other kids can see me and think 'if she could make it, I might have a chance', and try and keep their dreams alive."

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