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One goal left for US footballer

Cindy Parlow started playing football when she was five years old, taking on her older brothers at their home in Memphis, Tennessee.

Now, 17 years later, the striker and her team-mates on the US women's national team want to win the World Cup in front of an enthusiastic home crowd.

In her brothers' footsteps

As a little girl, she looked up to her brothers and wanted to emulate them in every way, from the way they dressed to the sports they played.

"Whatever sport they played, I obviously wanted to do it. They got me into sports, soccer, basketball and T-ball," she said.

It did not take long for her brothers to see that their little sister had big potential as a footballer.

"She turned eight and started nutmegging us," her brother Rick said.

Nutmegging is soccer slang for a humiliating manoeuvre in which a player threads the ball through his or her opponent's legs.

"She would play with us in the side yard, and she was just as physical and just as skilled as we were at an early age," he said.

Soccer desert

It is a minor miracle that the Parlow family played football at all.

Years later, her coach at the University of North Carolina would describe their home state of Tennessee as a "a soccer desert."

When Rick and his brother first wanted to play, they asked their father if he would coach their team. Their father, Larry Parlow asked them, "What's soccer?"

Cindy's team often had to drive hundreds of miles to play another girl's team, but in the absence of a girl's side, they would play against boy's teams.

But she kept playing football. "I love it. I've always loved it since I could walk," she said.

One goal left

She not only kept playing, but she kept improving.

At the tender age of 16, she earned a spot on the US national team. The next year, she helped the US win gold at the Olympics in Atlanta.

At the University of North Carolina, she twice won the top individual honour in college soccer. Only one other player in women's soccer has achieved that honour twice, soccer prodigy Mia Hamm.

US national team Coach Tony DiCicco said Cindy has the potential to become the best woman player in the world.

But for the woman who won a state title in Tennessee, a pair of national titles at university and an Olympic gold medal, she said one thing missing - a women's World Cup title.

On Thursday, the US meets Germany in the quarter-finals. Although the US is favoured to win, Cindy said, "Germany is a very, very good team. It will be battle to the end."

Internet Links

Official Women's World Cup site
US Soccer Federation

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