Zambia’s Barbra Banda named BBC Women’s Footballer of the Year

Zambia’s Barbra Banda has been voted BBC Girls’s Footballer of the 12 months 2024.

The Orlando Pleasure striker took residence the British media firm’s prize, which covers performances from September 2023 to August 2024 in high stage ladies’s competitions, after receiving the best variety of votes from readers of the BBC Sport web site. Banda was one in every of 5 gamers initially shortlisted for the award.

It has been a productive 12 months for the 24-year-old.

Banda scored 4 objectives for the African nation within the ladies’s soccer event on the Olympic Video games Paris 2024, together with a first-half hat-trick towards Australia, to change into the main African goalscorer in Olympic historical past (10).

Within the 2024 Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League, Banda scored 13 objectives for the Pleasure through the common season and the goalscoring kind continued deep into the playoffs. The Zambian netted 4 extra objectives together with the winner within the championship last on Saturday, serving to to raise Orlando Pleasure to their first-ever NWSL title.

Banda was additionally named Most Invaluable Participant (MVP) within the North American league, and is now solely the second African footballer to win the BBC’s prize after Asisat Oshooala in 2015.

Earlier winners embody Mary Earps in 2023, Vivianne Miedema (2021) and Ada Hegerberg (2019).