What to do when Marta hands you an L

Are a women’s professional soccer player? Have you ever faced Marta and had her embarrass you in public in front of your colleagues, friends, family, and the internet at large? Congratulations, you have joined a large and distinguished club of international footballers.

The list of people whose souls Marta now owns is long. She is one with the sauce and the sauce is with her. In fact, just today at Orlando Pride training, she did this to her own teammate for no other reason than that she could.

That’s the kind of thing where you just have to accept your day is done, and nothing else will be accomplished. Go home, turn on Netflix, do some self care, and try again tomorrow. Honestly, the Orlando Pride should be contractually obligated to provide all their players with some kind of quiet room where people who have taken a public L from Marta can go to calm down and re-center themselves. My colleague Tim Foss from Sounder at Heart suggested that the Pride also provide an angry room, like those rage rooms where you can rent an empty unit and some safety glasses and just smash random objects. In any case, if you hire Marta, you should at least have some orange slices and a quiet shady spot ready at every practice.

Marta has been publicly embarrassing people across multiple continents for well over a decade now. Perhaps there should be some kind of group chat or private message board where you too can commiserate over being handed an L and people can comfort you. “Don’t worry, at least yours was only a tweet, she gave me my L at a World Cup.” At the very least, please understand that Marta has bamboozled all time-greats all over the world. It’s not your fault. Look, here’s a compilation by Youtube user WF Comps showing Marta collecting names and goals.

Maybe it doesn’t even have to be an L. You faced a transcendent artist and lost! Embrace it. You were on the same field as Marta. How many people get to say that?