- Vivianne Miedema has hit 14 goals in her last eight Arsenal games
- Her football addiction began when she was just three
- She discusses the Netherlands’ France 2019 playoff against Switzerland
“I like football way too much,” Vivianne Miedema kicked off to FIFA.com on Saturday.
FIFA – It was 13:15 in London – a time requested not to work around the 22-year-old’s lunch or a spot of shopping in Knightsbridge or Mayfair, but because it was half-time at Vitality Stadium. Not even a second of Bournemouth-Manchester United did the Arsenal striker entertain missing.
We soon discovered the 66-cap, 51-goal Netherlands international, who netted twice in the 4-2 victory over Denmark in last year’s UEFA Women’s EURO final, began her love affair with the beautiful game before adulthood. Long before.
“My parents were both big Feyenoord fans,” said Miedema. “I started going to the matches when I was about three years old. I got to meet loads of the players, which I loved.
“And I used to get back and kick around anything I could. I would hit everything in the house – my mum would go crazy!”
Little brother Lars, now an 18-year-old striker on the books at PEC Zwolle, came along three years and eight months after Vivianne. The siblings have been joined at the hip, by a football, ever since.
“Me and my brother, we were always playing football together, every day,” said the 22-year-old. “We had a football pitch right in front of our house. We used to play all day.
“And when we weren’t playing football, we were watching it – we’d watch everything, Shanghai against Beijing, anything – or playing FIFA on the Playstation. We both always wanted to be Feyenoord, so we’d always be fighting over that, and we’re both not good at losing. Our mum used to go crazy and say, ‘That’s enough Playstation’.”
