By the time Leydi Urbina realised she was six months pregnant, she had finished as the top scorer in the Venezuelan women’s top flight, been named in the team of the season, and reached the second leg of the league semi-final and the final of a futsal tournament she competed in during her spare time.
There had been few signs she was pregnant and no tailing off of the form that had just led her to score 14 goals in as many games for Deportivo La Guaira. Weight gain was the only clue and the one that, in the end, prompted Urbina to take a test.
“I was amazed because there are so many people who protect themselves and don’t get pregnant,” Urbina, 25, says, speaking from Caracas in Venezuela via a translator and accompanied by Jordan Florit, a Venezuelan football specialist who spotted Urbina while working with one of her former team-mates.
“I found out and it was a shock, but thanks to God I achieved what I wanted to afterwards. Babies are a blessing. If they arrive in someone’s life, you have to go on and keep fighting for them.
“But at the beginning: nothing. It was like nothing had happened to me, like I didn’t have anything there. Physically, I was super good. I reached every ball. I was running for every one.” She jokes that in her previous four seasons in the…
