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From refugee to world champion

After an odyssey across Europa Fatmire Alushi came to Germany from the former Yugoslavia. Today she is one of the best football players on the national team.

28.12.2015

Fatmire Alushi

A strong striker.

She has had to take two difficult paths in her lifetime, says Fatmire Alushi: first, fleeing with her family from the former Yugoslavia, across Europe to North-Rhine-Westphalia. An odysseey. The second was less dangerous: persuading her father that a girl could play football. At first she practiced dribbling and centring in secret. “My father would never have allowed me. Then one day he wanted to collect my brother from training and saw me.” From then on he has been her greatest supporter and promoter.

Fatmire Alushi, then called Fatmire Bajramaj, played in the Bundesliga at the age of 16. At 17 she made her debut on the A national team, at 18 she became U19 European chamption. Small, slim, always wearing striking make-up – but not to be stopped as a striker. In 2007 trainer Silvia Neid took the 19-year-old to the World Cup in China and brought her on four times during the tournament: the breakthrough. Together with the German national players, Alushi defended the World Cup title but did not take part in the 2015 World Cup in Canada because she was expecting a baby.

To this very day, Alushi feels closely bound up with her past as a refugee. “If you want to understand me and my life, you must immerse yourself in the history of the former Yugoslavia,” she writes in her ­autobiography, Mein Tor ins Leben – Vom Flüchtling zur Weltmeisterin. Alushi is an integration ambassador of the German Football Assocation. ▪