{"id":256305,"date":"2024-11-27T08:36:59","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T08:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2024\/11\/27\/banda-voted-bbc-womens-footballer-of-the-year-2\/"},"modified":"2024-11-27T08:36:59","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T08:36:59","slug":"banda-voted-bbc-womens-footballer-of-the-year-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2024\/11\/27\/banda-voted-bbc-womens-footballer-of-the-year-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Banda voted BBC Women&#8217;s Footballer of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\u00a0Zambia and Orlando Pride forward, Barbra Banda, has been voted BBC Wom\u00aden\u2019s Footballer of the Year.<\/p>\n<p>She received the most votes from readers of the BBC Sport website after a five-player shortlist was announced last month.<\/p>\n<p>The shortlist based on perfor\u00admances from September 2023 to August 2024 was selected by a large panel of experts involved in football around the world, includ\u00ading coaches, players, administrators and non-BBC journalists.<\/p>\n<p>Banda scored four goals for Zambia at the Paris Olympics this summer, including a first-half hat-trick against Australia, to become the leading African goal scorer in Olympic history with 10.<\/p>\n<p>She scored 13 goals for Pride in 2024 National Women\u2019s Soccer<\/p>\n<p>League (NWSL) regular season, despite only joining in March, and four goals in the playoffs, including the winning goal in the championship final on Saturday as Orlando Pride won their maiden title.<\/p>\n<p>Banda was also named Most Valuable Player (MVP) in the NWSL.<\/p>\n<p>Spain and Barcelona midfielder, Aitana Bonmati, came second in the voting, while USA and Port\u00adland Thorns forward Sophia Smith finished third.<\/p>\n<p>Norway and Barcelona winger, Caroline Graham Hansen, and USA and San Diego Wave defend\u00ader, Naomi Girma, were also on the shortlist.<\/p>\n<p>Banda became the second-most expensive women\u2019s signing in history behind Zambia team-mate Racheal Kundananji when she joined Pride from Chinese club Shanghai Shengli $740,000 (\u00a3581,000) in March.<\/p>\n<p>The Zambia captain, who came 12th in the 2024 Women\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or, is a former professional boxer who won all of her five bouts before switching focus to football<em>.-BBCa<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0Zambia and Orlando Pride forward, Barbra Banda, has been voted BBC Wom\u00aden\u2019s Footballer of the Year. She received the most votes from readers of the BBC Sport website after a five-player shortlist was announced last month. The shortlist based on perfor\u00admances from September 2023 to August 2024 was selected by a large panel of experts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":256306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Banda voted BBC Women&#039;s Footballer of the Year - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2024\/11\/27\/banda-voted-bbc-womens-footballer-of-the-year-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Banda voted BBC Women&#039;s Footballer of the Year - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0Zambia and Orlando Pride forward, Barbra Banda, has been voted BBC Wom\u00aden\u2019s Footballer of the Year. She received the most votes from readers of the BBC Sport website after a five-player shortlist was announced last month. 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