© Getty Images It was a warm summer day in 1978 when 12-year-old Michelle Akers saw something awful. Her favourite player on her hometown Seattle Sounders suffered a broken leg, and with the shattered bone poking through his skin, he hauled himself up to kick the ball out of bounds.
“His name was Dave Gillet,” Akers, a pioneer of the women’s game, told FIFA.com. “He was such a hard tackler. Totally uncompromising. Ferocious. Also, it helped that he was so damned good-looking.”
She did not cringe at this early glimpse of extraordinary – and extreme – determination. She did not bury her face in her hands. The incident inspired Akers, who grew up poor on the outskirts of Seattle. She is remembered now as one of the best women’s players of all-time. No one, before or since, man or woman, was more competitive or more committed.
“I had to actually learn to be less physical,” said Akers, who scored the first-ever goal for the US women’s national team in 1985 and went on to win two FIFA W..
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