Questo articolo del tedesco Rainer Hennies è stato pubblicato su WOMENS SOCCER WORLD del maggio/giugno 1997.
In questa pagina è riportata la versione originale. Ci sono alcune inesattezze, Carolina non è la donna più famosa dello sport italiano, in Italia il calcio femminile non è professionistico, almeno ufficialmente, ci sono delle citazioni in italiano con qualche piccolo errore.
Ho comunque riportato in una pagina a parte anche la traduzione in italiano. (Gabe KW)

Carolina Morace: 

Italian Star could tie record

at U.S. v Italy game in

U.S. Capitol

When she enters the playing field at any National Team appearance in Italy, the stands erupt with cries of "Carolina! Carolina!"

Rainer Hennies profiles Italy's best known woman in sports, Carolina Morace (pronounced: Cah-ro-LEE-na-Mo-RAH-chay), who has wowed the fans in her country for at least 15 years.

Ar 33 years old, she is a striker and a super-star. Carolina Morace reigns as the soccer queen of Italy. Whoever writes about women’s soccer in Italy writes about Morace. Whoever speaks about women’s soccer (called “calcio femminile” in Italy) speaks ahout “la Morace.” Italian women s soccer is focussed on their top star, more than in any other country in
the world.
With 142 international appearances (as of 3/3 1/97) she is number one in Italian soccer with more caps than Dino Zoff (112), the male record holder. On the current women’s caps ranking list, Morace is in third position, following Pia Sundhage (Sweden, 146) and Heidi Store (Norway, 145). Since Sundhage has recently retired and Store suffers from a knee-injury from the Olympics, Morace has a chance to win hack the number one women’s standing for international appearances, which she lost when Italy lost the chance to play more international games after failing to qualify for World Cup ‘95 and Olympics ‘96.
Assuming that she will play in Italy’s friendly match against England in the end of April and participate in ali three games of the U.S. Cup, Morace will pull even with Sundhage during the game against the U.S. in Washington, D.C.’s RFK Stadium. When she returns to play in the European Cup this summer, she could equal the men’s record holder for caps, Majed Abdullah (Saudi Arabia, 147 caps). If she continues to appear for Italy during European Cup competition, she will eclipse all records for men or
women for number of international appearances.
Recently Morace broke another barrier. Having scored 99 goals for her national team she went four games without scoring, and it seemed that a psychological barrier was developing. Then March 23rd, the Squaddra Azurra played Greece in a friendly on her home ground at Modena. In the sixth minute, Morace scored the first goal, in what became a 4-1 victory for Italy.
In Italy’s national league, “serie A,” Morace’s career is unique. In nearly 18 years in the national league, she has scored 480 goals in 442 games, and led her team to the league champion position ten times in the past twelve years.

With the National 
Team in 1993.
 This year, with her current club from Modena, Morace seems headed for another League Championship. So far this season she has scored 29 goals, and with nine games left to play she has a good chance of breaking her own season record of 40 goals, set in 1988 when playing for Lazio, Roma.
These accomplishments obviously come from an intense focus. As she puts it, “My task is tu score. lt is just that I concentrate on this task, nothing more".
 “Soccer is a team sport. It is like an orchestra. If everybody is a master of his instrurnent, you are successful,” Morace explains. “My instrurnent is a very special one, because is a striker I have to decide the game. But I know that this is not possible without a good job done by my teammates.”
 Her career as a soccer player could have heen preordained by her parents house and neighborhood. Born in Venice, she grew up between two soccer grounds, each just a stone’s throw away from her home. Morace's father, a former officer in the Italian Navy, realized very quickly that tor his daughter it was no real challenge to kick around with some of the boys from the neighborhood. He helped her join a serious girls’ team at the age of ten. Four years later she changed club teams to Belluno, 120 miles north of Venice. It was her first team on the national league level.
 That same year she was called as a reserve for the national squad for a friendly match against Yugoslavia. “It was a fantastic moment, when the coach used me as a substitute for the last minutes,” as Morace remembers her debut. She came into the game to substitute for Betti Vignotto, for many years the leading Italian striker and team captain. Eleven years later, when Vignotto retired from international play, she passed the captain’s hand and the shirt with that legendary number “9” on its back to Carolina Morace.

Dogs adore her too.
 This woman seems tu be a natural champion, on and off the field. Friends call her “Tiger” a nickname which summarizes the combination of Italian hot blood, grace and femininity that marks her aggressiveness in the game and her personality. Or as they say in Italian: “Carolina sa unire grazia e femminilita ad un carattere vincente, da vera campionessa."
 For Morace, soccer is “the best way to express myself. I Iike the energy that explodes in the game. I like the positive aggressiveness of sports. I like to win, at least to give my best to win. This is why I
can accept a loss if I know that I gave rny best. For me soccer is the most important part of my life.” Although her public roles demand aggressiveness, leadership, confidence and exuberance, in private
she is able to show calmer and more sensitive eniotions. “Joy” and “Freedom” are the names of her two dogs. They are named after the two principles which are most important to her life.
Her dream is of equality of men and women in soccer, especially in Italy, where in soccer one can still find much male dominance. This inequality, that women's soccer still is not accepted by men, angers her. “Women love soccer as much as men do. Women and soccer as well as men and soccer are part of our culture.” Men may have an edge because of a longer tradition of playing the game and greater physical strength, but she sees this as no reason to relegate women's efforts in the sport to a lower status.
 This is the view of a wornan who finished university some months ago and now works in a legal office in Rome, finishing the second part of her education. She is working tu qualify as an assessor of law, for when she ends her professional career in soccer.

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