Tabitha Chawinga wasn’t always a prolific scorer. The Paris Saint-Germain star played goalkeeper in rural Malawi as a young girl.
A collision with a defender changed all that. Her mouth was bloodied.
“After that I stopped playing the goal, because I was afraid as well (of) my mom,” Chawinga says.
Her mother frowned on her playing soccer and would slap Chawinga to get her to stop, she says. It’s one of the many obstacles she’s faced during her rise to stardom. As a teenager, she was considered so good that one time she was forced to remove her clothes on the field to prove to the other team that she’s female.
The 27-year-old Chawinga’s confidence and positive attitude have helped her excel on three continents. She left Malawi for the lower divisions of Sweden at age 17 and later played in China before joining Inter Milan for a season, and now PSG.
She’s filled up the scoresheet at each stop and this season has helped PSG reach the semifinals of the Women’s Champions League, facing French rival Lyon on Saturday.
“My dream is one by one. I was dreaming to play in Champions League, now I’m in Champions League. I have a dream to win Champions League, who knows … maybe we can win Champions League this year. I have a dream to become (a) player who can win Ballon d’Or, maybe the first woman in Africa. Anything can happen, only God knows,” Chawinga tells The Associated Press in an interview from Paris ahead of the first-leg semifinal in Lyon.
Chawinga — whose younger sister Temwa is an emerging star for the NWSL’s Kansas City Current — recalled playing soccer with the boys in her village and using balls made of plastic and paper.
“I was happy if I got to play football. But every time I come back my mom beat me, slap me. They wanted me to stop football. But this is the career from God, so I think God have very big future for me.”
Her parents wanted her to focus on education. Instead of obeying them, Chawinga pressed on.
Now, she leads the French league in scoring a season after she topped the charts in Italy for Inter Milan.
Both seasons have been on loan because she remains under contract to Wuhan Jianghan University in the Chinese professional league until December. She transferred from Kvarnsvedens in Sweden to Chinese club Jiangsu Suning in 2018 when Chinese teams were spending heavily to import talent.
Amid Chawinga’s scoring spree, PSG coach Jocelyn Prêcheur suggests there’s plenty more to come.
“She’s expressing herself more and more on the pitch, she’s pretty much fully settled in, you can feel she’s enjoying it, and that has an impact on her performances,” says Prêcheur, who also coached Chawinga in China.