Spain celebrate but Olga Carmona’s tragedy mars their World Cup triumph | Sid Lowe

The Women’s World Cup was won the hardest way with a victory achieved amid an ongoing war against inequality

How do you even begin to get your head around this? How can you comprehend the layers of feeling and meaning, already many and deep? Amidst the celebrations in the hours after Spain lifted their first World Cup, the footballer who scored the goal to win it, dedicated it to her friend’s mother who had just passed away, was told that her own father had died. Tomas Carmona didn’t see the moment his daughter made history but she didn’t know that yet. He had passed away while her mother and brother flew to Australia for the final and they had chosen to leave her to live this, everything she had ever wanted.

“This is a dream, but literally: when you go to bed and dream of things that can happen in life, you dream of this,” Carmona said after the final, an added poignancy later lent to every word, every act, heartfelt anyway, by the news of her father’s passing. She had already scored in the semi-final; now her low, precise effort went past Mary Earps’s hand at 98km/h and she set off almost as quick in the other direction.

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