No perfect Olympics ending for Marta - but a silver medal 'rescue act' was enough (2024)

There was no perfect ending for Marta, but that didn’t matter. The Brazilian legend was still proud.

In so many ways, a gold-medal match was the perfect ending to Marta’s major tournament career with Brazil.

Her first Olympics, 20 years ago, ended in a silver finish at the hands of the USA in Athens, Greece. The same happened in Beijing, China four years later. And now Paris 2024 has also ended that way — second place and watching Americans step up onto the podium for their gold medals, after the USWNT won 1-0 at the Parc des Princes on Saturday.

Those were the facts, not the feelings. The feelings mattered more, in the end.

“When I won silver in 2004 and 2008, I didn’t feel as proud as I do at this moment,” Marta told reporters in the mixed zone after the match, answering a few questions solely in Portuguese. “I waited 16 years to play in another Olympic final. Let’s be honest, due to our recent tournament record, not many people were expecting Brazil to leave here with a medal.”

True. That Brazil made it to the final was perhaps a surprise, and not just because of their group-stage exit at the World Cup a year ago.

They snuck into the knockout rounds with a minus-two goal differential as one of the third-place teams, eking past Australia, with their minus-three goal differential. And they were without Marta, their captain, for the quarterfinal and semifinal after she received a red card in their final group-stage match against Spain that resulted in a two-game ban.

First, they toppled the host nation, France. Then, 2023 World Cup winners Spain were beaten. Up in the stands, unable to contribute, Marta pumped her fists and danced in celebration. This was her chance for the 38-year-old to write her own ending at the close of her international career, a gift from her teammates.

So when she entered Saturday’s match at the 61st minute, just after Mallory Swanson had made it 1-0, there was an initial murmur from the crowd as she stood, bib off, getting final instructions. Then, the first swell of sound as she waited at the sideline for her entrance, before finally the roar as she took the field and her name was announced as a replacement.

There was no moment of magic, though.

In the 89th minute, her free kick sailed over the crossbar, US goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher raising a hand more out of obligation than any real threat. Then in one of the last moments of the game, with Brazil trying to break into the box, Marta was whistled for a handball. Less than two minutes later, the match was over.

Silver.

Again.

👑 Rainha Marta… A nossa Rainha! A palavra é gratidão. Você é a história!

Palavras não são capazes de descrever o tamanho da sua grandeza. A maior de todos os tempos. Inspiração para tantas gerações. Um legado que jamais será esquecido! Estaremos juntas! E sempre será assim… pic.twitter.com/V77MOEDMkw

— Seleção Feminina de Futebol (@SelecaoFeminina) August 10, 2024

For Marta, however, no matter what the result of this game, there would be no doubt about her legacy. And she called Brazil’s silver medals “a rescue act” after the match.

“The rescuing of pride we feel when we see that Brazilian women’s football can compete, when we remember we have talent,” she said. “We need to value it more.”

There are a lot of people talking about the Brazil program when the team loses, she said. “They criticize, but they don’t help.” Marta wanted to reframe who this medal was for — the people who believed in them. Many of them were in the stands, easily confirmed by the many pockets of canary-yellow shirts and the sheer number of Brazil flags on display at any given moment during the match.

“We don’t owe a thing to the opportunists who talk s**t,” she concluded.

And why should they? Brazil will stage the next Women’s World Cup in 2027, hopefully a tournament that will once again redefine the interest and investment in the sport at home for a country that once legally banned women from playing it.

Marta will be there. She promised that on Saturday. It just won’t be on the pitch.

She said she didn’t see herself playing in any more tournaments, following earlier comments that this would be her final year with the national team. But there’s no way she’ll miss 2027, it will just look different, “in the stadium, cheering on the girls”. She doesn’t know the plans of the national team, but she still hopes to contribute in some form.

“This is my life,” she said. “I won’t walk away from football. I want to help this generation in some way.”

There will be an immense amount of pressure on the team known as the Selecao in three years as the host nation. That is the nature of a World Cup. But Marta believes in this generation of players, a group who all recognize the role she has played in their lives as footballers.

And in the immediate near term, there will be the comfort of returning to the club game in the US and the project of winning an NWSL title with Orlando Pride. Orlando went undefeated through the entire first half of the season before the Olympic break, there are more trophies on the line that Marta has never won — the NWSL Shield for the best regular-season record and then the NWSL championship. There won’t be any slowing down over the next few months.

In the mixed zone at Parc des Princes, silver medal glinting as it hung from her neck, Marta was holding back tears once again. But it was pride that she kept coming back to, that feeling overwhelming everything else.

“I’ve been doing what I love the most for over 20 years. I think back and remember everything I had to do to get here — leaving my family at age 14,” she said.

“I dedicated my life to a sport that wasn’t always seen as a sport for women. Today, it’s one of the most followed sports, in the media and by the public. Someone had to start that process. I’m very proud to have contributed to that process in some way.”

(Top photo: Getty Images)

Meg Linehan is a senior writer for The Athletic who covers the U.S. women's national team, the National Women's Soccer League and more. She also hosts the weekly podcast "Full Time with Meg Linehan." Follow Meg on Twitter @itsmeglinehan