Born in Malawi, PSG striker Tabitha Chawinga had to face many challenges to realize her dream: to become a footballer. Between the complicated childhood and the judgment on his morphology, the player had a very tormented journey. This Thursday, March 28, he faces Häcken in the Champions League.
“My mother was ashamed, she didn’t want me to play football and she hit me to make me stop.” Long before becoming PSG’s serial goalscorer, Tabitha Chawinga had a journey full of pitfalls. It is in the heart of Malawi, in a modest family of six children, that he took his first steps with a ball, to the great dismay of his parents…
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The latter did not want to see their daughter play football, considering that it is a child’s sport. They even went so far as to imagine suspicious behavior. “For them, if I played football, it necessarily meant that I slept with the boys,” assures Chawinga in an interview with 20 Minutes in December 2023.
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But the young Malawian was full of determination. “I didn’t plan to give up this dream for anything,” she says. Ready to do anything to pursue this discipline, he left his country to join one of the most exclusive clubs in the capital, DD Sunshine. There, as in his old club, he experienced a terrible incident…
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Endowed with undeniable qualities, she was forced to undress to prove to her opponents that she was not a child. “They thought I was too good at football to be a girl. (…) It’s hard to explain the humiliation I felt,” he assured 20 Minutes. “I had never been so devastated,” he continued for The Guardian. A still “very painful” episode of her life that she was able to overcome thanks to the support of her friends.
After unexpected encounters, Chawinga, then 18 years old, landed in the Swedish third division. Impressively, he climbed the ranks, moved to China after Inter Milan and ended up at PSG.
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Now 28 years old, the scorer of the French championship with 15 goals continues to be insulted on social networks about her physique. “Like a woman”, “We need to check something here” or even “Looks like a man” we can read under a publication.
This Thursday, March 28, he faces club Häcken in the return quarter-final of the Champions League. An important player in the 2-1 win in the first leg, with a goal and an assist, the Malawian will once again be his team’s biggest asset tonight.