VOn Friday the 23rd, for the friendly match against Ireland, the captain of the Italian football team will take the field for her last match. Sara Gama leaves the national team after almost 18 years and the match will be the last in the extraordinary career of a player capable of bringing Italian women’s football into a new dimension. «Today I announce the decision to officially leave the Italian national team – Gama’s words -. It was an extraordinary journey, gone through incredible emotions and great changes. Now, however, I have given everything and decided to leave.”
Last match for Sara Gama
A decision, that of Gama, which comes less than two months before the start of the 2025 European Championship qualifiers scheduled in Switzerland. For the player it would have been the fifth, to be added to the 2019 edition of the World Cup (where Italy qualified after 20 years of absence). But Gama was also in Tours, in July 2008, when the Under 19 national team won the European category title, the only trophy won by an Italian women’s national team.
New paths for the Italian footballer
«I have decided to leave now – explained the footballer – at the beginning of a new cycle in which I have given my contribution to lay solid foundations for the future and transmit the right values to a group that has once again demonstrated its great potential. I’ll leave it here, where it all began. Thanks to everyone who shared our story. I used my body and mind to play. I also used them to talk and try to inspire, on and off the pitch. Today I can say that some of these words and gestures have helped.”
Sara Gama will leave football with great regret from the fans (Photo Vincenzo Livieri – LaPresse)
A painful farewell for the fans
A farewell that saddens the fans, more and more, of a national team for which Gama did so much thanks to his talent.
He made his debut on 17 June 2006 in Mariupol, Ukraine, in a match valid for the World Cup qualifiers. That was the first of 139 games which led the Juventus defender to become the fourth Italian footballer in terms of number of appearances for the national team. With number 140, in front of the Ireland team against whom she scored her first goal for the national team in March 2007, a circle will be closed.
Not just a footballer
But Sara Gama was not only a pillar of the national team, the athlete was the captain who changed Italian women’s football, a woman who has always fought and fought for gender equality and against racism. Vice president AIC and former federal councilor fought vigorously for achieve professionalism also for female footballers. His character and determination became even clearer when, received with the entire national team from President Mattarella after 2019 World Cup he has declared: “I wear the number 3 on my shirt, it is the number three of our beautiful Constitution, the one that establishes that we are all equal before the law, without any distinction.”
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