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Football

10th Jun 2019

FOX Sports panel take Ada Hegerberg to task over World Cup stance

SportsJOE

The best player in the world will not be appearing at the Women’s World Cup.

Ada Hegerberg, the Norweigan player who will not be appearing for her nation at the Women’s World Cup over the treatment of female players, has been criticised by a panel on Fox Sports.

The 23-year-old – who has scored 259 goals in 253 club career games – made herself unavailable for international selection after Norway were eliminated in the group stages of the 2017 European Championships in the Netherlands.

She has refused to play ever since, citing the way female players are treated by the Norweigan Football Federation.

“The decision isn’t just a consequence of the Euros,” said Hegerberg in a statement at the time. “It’s based on my experiences with the national team over a long period of time.”

“I always feel that I have been a worse player when I have gone home from the [national team] selection and it should not be so,” she added.

In a February interview with Norwegian football magazine Josimar, she elaborated: “We weren’t taken seriously as a women’s national team. There was no culture for training with quality or wanting to get better.”

However, in a discussion panel on Fox Sport’s coverage of the competition, Hegerberg was criticised for not being “clear” on where she stood on the issue and “hijacking” attention from her teammates. One panellist declared:

“You’re not going to change something as a single person. You do it as a team.”

Watch the discussion here:

https://twitter.com/WoSo_Comps/status/1137431722541363201

Since that discussion aired, hundreds of football fans have come out in support of Hegerberg.

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