Section:GDN 1N PaGe:40 Edition Date:190808 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 7/8/2019 20:04 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
- The Guardian Thursday 8 August 2019
(^40) Sport
Football
The photo of the kiss between
Magda Eriksson and Pernille
Harder at the Women’s World
Cup has had a profound impact
Nick Ames
Wolfsburg
PlayProud, a global initiative that
aims to make team sports a safer
and more welcoming environment
for youths who identify as LGBTQ+.
“We’ve played without privilege and
now we are privileged,” Eriksson
says. “So now we want to give back
to those people who don’t have the
same situations we do.”
Among PlayProud’s fi ndings is
that more than 40% of LGBTQ+
youth do not believe their
I
t was the most normal thing in
the world to Magda Eriksson
when, after helping Sweden
defeat Canada in the last 16
of the Women’s World Cup,
she located her partner in the
stands and wandered over towards
Parc des Princes crowd. They shared
a kiss and thought nothing of it
until later on, when the amount of- Argentina, Brazil ...” Harder is
speaking at another familiar scene:
the dining table of her apartment
just outside Wolfsburg where she
is preparing for a fourth season
with the serial German champions.
Beside her sits Eriksson, the Chelsea
defender, who has spent the three
weeks of her pre-season break
here. Time like this is precious:
once the football starts in earnest
they may see each other only a
couple of days a month. They
cannot remember sitting down for
an interview together before but
their relationship, which they have
never hidden since getting together
as teammates with the Swedish
club Linköping, has taken on a new
dimension.
“We’ve always just been natural,
not so much thinking of being
inspirations together, putting
pictures up of each other or
anything like that,” Harder says.
“But when we saw that photo and
the comments around it, then it was
really something; like: ‘We’re role
models.’ We had messages from a lot
of young people, people of our age,
but older people also.”
Eriksson came to a similar
realisation. “I think that’s when I felt
the demand for role models in that
way, because of how big it was and
how many people wrote to me on
Instagram saying they looked up to
activity on their phones suggested
something was blowing up.
“We weren’t even aware anyone
was taking a photo ,” Eriksson says.
But somebody had and the noise on
social media had nothing to do with
the fact the girlfriend in question,
the Denmark international Pernille
Harder, was wearing the shirt of
her country’s arch-rivals. The
image’s power came from its sheer
rarity: a gay, high-profi le sporting
couple showing their love in public
without the slightest abashment.
Harder realised what had happened
only when her Twitter following
suddenly swelled by 3,000; the
penny began to drop that something
so everyday to both women could be
an inspiration to millions.
“It was crazy, the picture
was tweeted all over the worldus and how much we’d helped them.
That’s when I understood that we’re
really powerful together. Before, we
hadn’t really seen ourselves as that.”
That power has been wielded for
further good now they have signed
up for Common Goal, the movement
through which footballers pledge
1% of their earnings to organisations
that drive social change. They
are the fi rst couple to do so and
their donations will be pledged to‘We weren’t aware
anyone took it –
it was crazy, the
picture was tweeted
all across the world’
▲ The moment at the
World Cup match between
Sweden and Canada in
Paris that went viral
SIMON HASTEGARD/BILDBRYAN/
REUTERS‘We saw the
reaction and
realised: we’re
role models’
▼ Pernille Harder (right)
and Magda Eriksson are
‘powerful together’
KARSTEN THIELKER/THE GUARDIANofound impact
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