Meet Beverly Ranger, forgotten superstar of the women's game - ESPN

With the scoreline level, Bonner SC's Beverly Ranger received the ball and maneuvered her way around five SV Bergisch Gladbach defenders, gliding with ease as the ball glued to her feet. The 22-year-old then did the same with the goalkeeper and tapped into the empty net to score a goal so impressive that it earned her ARD Sportchau's Goal of the Month award for April 1975.

The Jamaican star became the first Black woman, and only the second woman ever, to win the prestigious prize for the best goal in Germany that was routinely dominated by male Bundesliga players. The wide media recognition earned her a sponsorship from sportswear giant, Puma, and she was even paid under a club contract. Given nicknames like «The female Pele,» Ranger achieved what seemed unattainable at the time, and it would take much of the next half-century for the rest of the women's game to catch up. She was a true pioneer, yet her name has not carried through the generations.

«I knew nothing about her and honestly I'm shocked that I had never heard about her from at least anyone in the United States,» Cheyna Matthews, a striker in the Jamaica squad at the 2023 Women's World Cup, told ESPN.

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When Ranger was born in Kingston in 1953, playing competitive football was unimaginable for women in many countries around the world, and Germany was no exception. «The attractiveness of women, their bodies, and souls will suffer irreparable damage and the public display of their bodies will offend morality and decency,» the German football federation (DFB) had claimed in 1955 when it blocked the formation of a national women's league. That ban was