Beverly Ranger: the greatest footballer you’ve never heard of
The story of one of football's forgotten GOATs and how she redefined success
If you ask me who I think are the five most influential football players of all time–and yes, I know, iT’s CaLleD SoCceR… but let me just indulge my fantasy that this article is reaching a global audience in the millions; I will call it football–I’d probably say number one, Lionel Messi. Number two, Diego Maradona. Number three, Pele. Number four, Cristiano Ronaldo. And number five, Beverly Ranger.
If you’ve never heard of that last one, you’re not alone. I hadn’t either until two weeks ago, when my friend sent me a now-viral twitter thread by photographer Harriet Duffy. It was a mini-bio of one of football’s forgotten GOATs.
Picture this:
A packed stadium with thousands of cheering fans. A center-forward drops into the midfield and receives a pass from a teammate. They control the ball and in one swift motion turn towards the opponent’s goal, still more than forty yards away. An opposing defender sprints toward them. They cut the ball to the left just as the defender’s swinging leg nearly misses their shin. They feint to the right and once again push the ball to the left, gliding past another defender. Two more defenders run at them. In stride, they slip the ball between the defenders, dodging two slide-tackles. They accelerate into the penalty area. One-on-one with the keeper now. They cut the ball again back to the left. The goalkeeper stumbles and they slide the ball into the open net. The crowd goes wild.
It’s a description worthy of one of Messi or Maradonna’s greatest goals. Only this goal does not belong to them. It’s actually one of Beverly Ranger’s vintage goals, one of dozens she scored in the German women’s Bundesliga in the 1970s–long before either Messi or Maradona graced the pitch.
Beverly Ranger was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1953. She moved to England with her family when she was just 12 years old and started playing football outside the Old Wembley Stadium with a group of boys. Pretty soon people started to notice her. She was damn good. So good, in fact, that people who saw her play encouraged her to join a local club.
She started playing on the Watford women’s team and in 1974 made the move to the budding German Bundesliga. Which at the time featured zero full-time professional women’s players. Most of the women in the league didn’t make nearly enough to support themselves from football alone… until Ranger came along.
Ranger quickly captivated the German league and drew large crowds who came to witness the “female Pele”. As one of the few black and foreign players in the mostly-white, mostly-German league at the time, she was a trailblazer. She was one of only two international players in the German league in 1974, and though I can’t verify this, she may have been the only black player in the league. As a result, she dealt with all sorts of racism and was nicknamed the “black pearl” and the “coffee-brown beauty” according to an article by Tagesspiegel.
In 1975 she led her team, SSG Bergisch Gladbach, to the league championship. That season, she became only the second woman ever to win German TV channel ARD’s coveted “goal of the month” award. Ranger soon became a household name. Fans described her as virtually unplayable, and if you are able to find her highlights on YouTube, you’ll see what they meant. She’s silky smooth on the ball, a natural and decisive dribbler. Some journalists said they thought she had glue on her shoes because the ball never seemed to stray too far from her foot.
In 1975, Ranger achieved something no other woman in Germany had achieved before her. Puma offered her a lucrative sponsorship deal and she became the first female professional player in the country–the first woman to make a living by playing football.
In the 1970s and 80s, Jamaican women’s football was virtually non-existent. After her career in Europe, there was only so far Ranger could take her game. She retired in 1978 and later moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, and became a teacher. According to a Linkedin profile with no other information but her name on it, she’s now a “retired teacher”.
These days, all around the world, women’s football is as popular as ever. Players like Marta, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Vivianne Miedama, and Lena Oberdorf are household names. But before these global superstars, there was another star: Beverly Ranger–a star that shone before its time and evaporated into the ether. Had she been around today, she might be considered one of football’s GOATs but instead, most people have never even heard of her.
Germany is a powerhouse of modern women’s football. In 2003 and 2007 they were World Cup champions. Had it not been for Beverly Ranger’s help in popularizing the women’s game in the country, one can only imagine what German women’s football would be like today..
When I started reading about Beverly Ranger, I was fascinated and sort of heartbroken that she never truly got the credit she deserved. But, more than that, her story made me think about my own definition of success and my own life goals (pun intended).
Since I started obsessing over books as soon as I learned how to read, I’ve wanted to become a writer. But I’ve always tied “being a writer” to some form of success, like publishing a best-selling book. In other words, when I fixated on some sort of result or achievement, the goal felt impossible.
Over the years, I’ve realized that fixating on some form of achievement is, first of all, just my ego getting in my own way, and second, a complete pipedream. You can’t start writing with the hopes of becoming the next JK Rowling or Dan Brown, otherwise, nothing you write will ever be good enough and you probably won’t even bother.
I can’t speak for Beverly Ranger, but I would imagine she didn’t start playing football to become a professional player. At the time, a woman moving to Germany to become a professional football player would have probably seemed like the equivalent of swimming to the moon.
My point is when we let go of any expectation of reward or result, we allow ourselves to do more meaningful work, feel better while doing it, and open our minds to the possibilities of venturing into the unknown. Beverly Ranger probably didn’t move to Germany with many grand expectations. After all, her career path did not exist at all. She simply put one foot in front of the other and was relentless in the process of discovering what she could make out of her love for the beautiful game. Of course, I can’t speak for her, but if you watch videos of her playing she looks completely elated and enamored by her craft. If she had fixated only on achieving some sort of result or reward from her career, she probably never would have become the pioneer of women’s football as she did.
As I’ve grown older and (hopefully) wiser, I’ve now completely let go of any macro goals when it comes to writing. Who gives a shit if I ever make money from writing, who even cares if anyone reads this stuff? Obviously, I want to share my writing with as many people as possible but if no one reads it I’m still going to sit down at my desk next Monday and start writing again. I’ll be fine whether I write or not, and whether I achieve something from writing or not. And, if my motivation comes from a pure source, like my love for writing and sharing stories, then I will do it no matter what, and maybe if I’m lucky someone will mention me in a Twitter thread 50 years from now.
Ultimately, if we tie our ambitions to some sort of tangible end result we are going to severely limit our ability to achieve anything at all. The key is to enjoy the micro-steps of the process and to find our motivation and passion in our love for whatever craft we chose to work on, to be the best we can be regardless of whether or not there is reward or success at the end of the tunnel.
Success is a great and admirable pursuit but it must be a by-product of our goal, not the goal itself. Instead, the goal should be to show up and do our best in every step of the process.
Beverly Ranger didn’t do what she did for worldwide fame or success, and in fact, she never really got it. Still, by giving it her all every time she stepped on the field, she changed the football world forever and paved the way for dozens of girls all over the world to play football for a living.
You never know what can happen if you just keep going, take one step at a time, and prioritize the process over the result.
(P.S. I pulled a lot of this info from various sources around the web including some old German newspaper articles translated with Google Translate. If you have any corrections or more info about Beverly Ranger, give me a shout in the comments)
Amazing story; I had no idea. She was truly a pioneer