Her father is from Iran, her mother from Turkey, and the 27-year-old German had to begin her early days in football playing in a boys team.

The German, born in Köln, explained to Onefootball that things have changed since she was growing up.

“I started playing when I was three and 24 years ago it wasn’t like it is now,” Doorsoun laughs.

“Nowadays, a lot of girls play in the same teams as boys. But when I was three, four, five, six, that was something different.

“The boys looked at me like, ‘no, what are you doing in our team, we don’t want to play with girls.’ But then I was totally accepted. Now it’s different, sometimes you see five or six girls in a boys team but I was the only one.”

Undeterred by that, it should come as no surprise that she has continued to defy the odds and now finds herself at a World Cup.

Doorsoun played on and off for the Germany youth teams but didn’t make her senior bow for the national team until she was 24. A year on, she was playing at the Euros, where Germany suffered defeat to Denmark in the quarter-finals.

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