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Every week, Ella coaches a team from a refugee reception centre just outisde Wolfsburg. field. For me, it doesn’t take thousands of dollars, it takes someone going in and building the structure correctly and understanding the way it works. And through Common Goal there’s no reason why you don’t have the human beings and manpower to put people in place to do that. For me it is also about equality, the men’s (and women’s) players really coming in and joining hands because that is what generates movement. It’s not just about the money, it’s also about the faces. You’re talking about all of these people involved in this great thing together to make the world a better place and that are supporting all of these organisations all over the world using football for social impact. Organisations, you would otherwise never even know of. WHEN DID YOU FIRST DISCOVER THIS OTHER SIDE TO FOOTBALL AND ITS ABILITY TO PRO- MOTE SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION? I can tell that best through a story. I went to Honduras, just outside Catacamas. I was there through a United States organisation called FCA, a more religion-based organisation for Christian athletes. On the first day we did a day of women’s football with the girls and the next day we went and played with the male prisoners. As soon as you went in, you could see the men looking at you, asking them- selves: ‘Who are you? What are you doing?’ But as soon as I had the football…I always do the same trick, I do a rainbow over the guy, the biggest, the best guy, always, and from that moment on the men looked me in my eyes, they gave me handshakes and I didn’t speak Spanish, they have no idea who I am, they don’t know about women’s football. But, at that moment in time, they looked at me, in my opinion as an equal, because we played foot- ball together and we laughed and it changed the dynamic. That’s also the beauty of football, you can travel the world and not speak the language and everyone understands. When you put that ball down in the middle, what happens? They come alive. And for me, that’s something that can unite the world, it has for years, just in different ways. I learned my best lessons in life through football, hard work, everybody has to put their foot behind the line. I’ve coached in West Vancouver, where you’re among the top five percent in the world and I’ve coached in Honduras where eight people are living in a small room together and it’s the same les- sons, it’s the same stories, it’s the same hope and inspiration that you see through football. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ARE THE GREATEST CHALLENGES FOR YOUNG GIRLS TODAY AND WHAT LIFE LESSONS CAN THEY LEARN THROUGH FOOTBALL? I think the biggest ones are confidence and self-belief, because I think as women we are hit down with a hammer a lot in our lives and you know, my mom was a ballet dancer and she is this skinny little thing, a yoga teacher, really hippy, she smokes weed all the time – can’t eat her brownies at home (laughs)! When she was growing up, she felt she always had to be skinny. You are looking in the mirror and you don’t see the beauty, you see ‘Oh, I have a wrinkle’, and I think it’s like that from a very young age. Especially now with social media it’s crazy, I think it’s 60 or 70 percent of young women have depression. Also men, they just don’t talk about it. And so as a message for future young girls, I hope that through football they see the real story and then look in the mirror and see some- one self-confident and say ‘I am beautiful as I am, I am special just the way I am’. I think, through football, you can understand the sense of team and the worth of people and wanting the best for the person next to you compared to being in competition and not finding the bigger purpose. I think football can teach you all of that. A PART OF YOUR NEXT CHAPTER BEYOND THE PROFESSIONAL PITCH, BUT STILL USING THE BEAUTIFUL GAME, IS COMMON GOAL, WHICH YOU RECENTLY JOINED. WHERE DID YOU HEAR ABOUT IT ANDWHAT MOTIVATED YOU TO BE- COME PART OF IT? I was actually at a film festival in Berlin. Through Wolfsburg I got introduced to Street Child United and the Homeless Football World Cup and then they took me here (to the 11mm Film Festival) and I got talking to the people from streetfootballworld and got a clearer picture. As women players especially, we think that ‘Ok, we don’t earn as much as men so, why? Why would you donate?’ And then you start to think a little bit more and you think ‘Ok, there’s a couple hundred Euros coming out and it’s gonna hurt maybe in the long-run, but what can you do to help? I think that as women (football- ers) you think it’s not so much how can it help, because I’m only giving 20 or 30 Euros, because that’s the reality, but once you get over that, you realise every dollar counts. You know, you get a team of twenty girls and they all give ten bucks, it’s pretty good. I think as football players it’s our duty and our job to give back and this is a way we can give back through more than our circle. Of course we do charity, but this is a way that you really affect the world – by giving as a collective, as a team – and so it was an easy answer for me. LOOKING AHEAD: HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE COMMON GOAL DRIVING CHANGE IN AND THROUGH FOOTBALL IN THE NEXT TEN YEARS? I don’t see why any third world country could not have a bigger stage, I don’t see why the federations can’t come in so that every na- tional team has a grassroots programme and through it people can be on an equal playing 34 35 FOOTBALL FORGOODMAGAZINE | AUGUST 2019 IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW ELLA MASAR D.O.B.: 3 RD APRIL 1986, URBANA, ILLINOIS NATIONALITY: US AMERICAN/CANADIAN MOST RECENT CLUB: VFL WOLFSBURG POSITION: FORWARD MEMBER SINCE: 8 TH APRIL 2019