Ada Hegerberg<\/a> is undoubtedly in high esteem. The Norwegian was crowned the first winner of the Ballon d’Or F\u00e9minin, the coveted award for the world\u2019s best player of the year, in 2018.<\/p>\nHegerberg will be hoping to lead Norway to glory at next year\u2019s women\u2019s World Cup in Brazil, which will come 32 years after their only triumph on the world stage.<\/p>\n
Cl\u00e1udia Vasconcelos Guedes\u00a0<\/p>\n
That was just the second edition of the World Cup after its debut in 1991, the same tournament that saw Cl\u00e1udia Vasconcelos Guedes become the first woman to referee a match at a FIFA tournament.<\/p>\n
The Brazilian oversaw the 1991 Women’s World Cup third-place play-off between Sweden and Germany, leading a first all-female officiating team at a\u00a0FIFA tournament alongside lineswomen, Zuo Xiudi of the People\u2019s Republic of China and New Zealand’s Linda Black.<\/p>\n
Guedes inspired many, and one of those who followed in her footsteps was Frenchwoman Stephanie Frappart, the first female to referee a FIFA men’s World Cup match, after she had already taken charge of a men’s World Cup qualifier and a\u00a0UEFA men’s Champions League game.<\/p>\n
Team USA<\/p>\n
When women\u2019s football made its Olympic debut at Atlanta 1996, eight nations battled to become the first Olympic champions in the event. That honour went to Team USA, where the Women\u2019s United Soccer Association, the first professional women\u2019s football league was established four years later.<\/p>\n
Bettina Wiegmann<\/p>\n
The United States will fondly remember winning Olympic gold on home turf, and it was an equally memorable tournament for Germany\u2019s Bettina Wiegmann. With her goal inside five minutes against Japan, Wiegmann was forever the first woman to score at an Olympic women\u2019s football tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Football\u2019s female trailblazers, from superstar players to referees Ada Hegerberg When it comes to discussing the modern stars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-390226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}