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Lyon striker Ada Hegerberg will return to Norway
Photo:
Lisi Niesner / REUTERS
Whether Ada Hegerberg is still one of the best strikers in the world will only become clear in the coming months and years.
However, it is now certain that she can prove it in two different kits: in club football with Olympique Lyon, and Hegerberg also returns to the Norwegian national team.
There are World Cup qualifiers at the beginning of April, and she will also return to the big stage at the European Championships in England this summer.
Norway then meets Ireland, Austria and the hosts in the preliminary round.
Five years ago, Hegerberg decided to leave this stage – in protest.
Hegerberg's frustration stemmed from the unequal treatment of footballers in Norway.
It was about payment, but above all about promotion, about equality, about the speed with which the more successful women's football was promoted in her home country.
The Gresshoppene, as the women's national team is called in Norway, has won a world title and two European titles.
Their male colleagues have only been to four major tournaments, with the 1998 World Cup round of 16 in France being their greatest success.
For Hegerberg it was clear at the time: Only if she gets out, if she does without the 2019 World Cup, if she clearly names the grievances with her radiance, can something change.
She sees it differently now, also because national players in Norway have been getting the same bonuses for years as Erling Haaland, for example, when he plays for Norway (and again misses the 2022 World Cup in Qatar).
Hegerberg said in a statement she's excited to be able to fight for the team again while continuing to fight for equality, both on and off the field.
"I want to do my part to help us reach our goals and inspire young girls and boys across the country," she said.
"Now I can finally do that with the flag on my chest again."
Hegerberg: »We still have a long way to go«
Hegerberg makes a U-turn.
If she thought her absence in the past few years was the right way to protest, the 26-year-old now wants to become more active again.
»I made a decision in 2017 that I do not regret.
But I've had a lot of time to reflect on many aspects of my life over the past two years," she said.
With a salary of 420,000 euros, Hegerberg is one of the best-earning female footballers in the world.
But she also knows about the precarious financial situation of many of her colleagues, be it in the French league away from Lyon and Paris Saint-Germain or in the Bundesliga, where she once played for Turbine Potsdam for two years.
"I know we still have a long way to go," she told Forbes magazine last week.
»But the question also arises as to whether an athlete's value is only judged by its economic value.
In terms of salary, of course, there is a very important discussion, but from a broader perspective, it is about respect, about education, about changing organizations and how young girls are seen there.”
90 minutes on the bench against Juve
Hegerberg remains the Champions League record goalscorer with 56 goals, despite being injured for almost two years.
First she had torn a cruciate ligament, shortly before her comeback she stopped a fatigue fracture.
The attacker has been back in Lyon's squad since last October - and she quickly proved her old goal threat with eight goals in the French league.
But for a few weeks Hegerberg – who won the premier class five times with Lyon and was the first player to win the Ballon d'Or in 2018 – has been in a bit of a crisis.
A completely normal process after such a long injury break.
In the 2-1 defeat in the Champions League against Juventus on Wednesday, she sat on the bench for 90 minutes.
Nevertheless, in the Norwegian association they know that the national team will be much better in attack with Hegerberg.
For years, even before the injury, association president Lisa Klaveness had been trying to persuade her star player to return.
"It wasn't a good feeling to have one of our best players outside of the national team," Klaveness said on Thursday.
National coach Martin Sjögren said it was a "challenging situation" with Hegerberg and he was happy "to be able to put it behind us".
Now the focus should be on football again.
But with Ada Hegerberg in the team, there will always be other issues.
With material from AP and sid
