“Long behind me”: Nati latecomer Arfaoui was about to end her career at 19

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If Amira Arfaoui (23) had listened to her doctor in 2019, she would have stopped playing football. The Bern resident had just undergone major meniscus surgery, the third in a row on her right knee. But Arfaoui fights back – and is rewarded for it. In 2021 she becomes Swiss champion with Servette and then moves to Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga, where she recently extended her contract until 2025. Her knees no longer bother her.

Replacement for Beney

“I’ve come a long way,” says Arfaoui. That too does not go without setbacks and detours in the Swiss World Cup team. After her national debut in 2020, the versatile attacker will no longer be called up. Inka Grings (44) nominated Arfaoui for the World Cup preparation for the first time. When the German presented the selection on July 3, Arfaoui was missing from the list.

The bad luck of Iman Beney (16), who injured her cruciate ligament, is Arfaoui’s bad luck. “I was already on my way to Leverkusen when I got the news that Iman was injured. But I was more sad for her than happy. Iman is like a sister to me,” says Arfaoui. She knows from her own experience that football is ‘super fast’ can go – in both directions.

Mother was against it

The daughter of Tunisian parents got into football through her father and older brother. The now retired father was a professional in Tunisia and the Netherlands and later earned his living as a taxi driver in Bern. He really wanted his daughter to play football too, but her mother had reservations. “She would have preferred me to do athletics or to continue playing table tennis,” said Arfaoui. But today she is the proudest mother you can imagine.

Arfaoui joins YB at the age of 14, just a few months later she is already a youth international. In 2015 she was part of the Swiss U17s, which reached the final at the European Championships in Iceland and ensured the biggest junior success in the SFV to date. “The EM was very special then, but the World Cup is of course much more special now,” says Arfaoui. The international stage, many spectators in the stadiums and in front of the television, the best players in the world. “A World Cup is every footballer’s dream. It will give me and my career a huge boost.”

Source : Blick