As a semi-professional footballer of some repute Gerd Stolsmo recognised talent when she saw it.

So it was that very early on she identified natural ability in her daughter Ada, and lots of it. It was the instinctive manner in which the small child controlled the ball, as if the spherical object was a familiar friend from a previous life. The manner in which she fired her shots, low and hard, into the corner of the net without ever being told this was the optimal thing to do.

On a training pitch situated just outside of Sunndalsora, a village situated just outside of nowhere, Ada would do this time and again, over and over, almost to the point of boredom, until impressed locals assumed she would construct a successful life with football at its core.

After all, her mother played for a Norwegian club and her father was a professional soccer coach. Her elder sister Andrine meanwhile was already showing the flair and drive that would eventually take her to PSG and Roma.

It was then a fair assumption to make.

Only Ada had other ideas, as she relayed to the Player’s Tribune in 2018.

“Growing up, we were a footballing family. My mom and dad both were coaches and my sister was a great player. I wanted nothing to do with it”

“We’re very practical people in Norway and I wanted to have a real job.”

Destiny Calling: Achieve, then advise

Destiny has shown of course that Ada Martine Stolsmo Hegerberg didn’t grow up to become an accountant or doctor. Instead she became one of the greatest footballers in the history of the sport, an instrumental figure in raising the bar of the women’s game, and an inspirational force both on and off the pitch.

She has won six Champions League honours and ten league titles with Lyon, joining the French side in 2014 from the German team Turbine Potsdam. In a decade and more of sheer brilliance, she has scored 254 goals in 252 appearances for Les Fenottes, terrorising defences both domestically and in continental competition.

No player has scored more goals in UEFA women's club competitions and in 2018 she was duly rewarded for her high achievements by winning the inaugural Ballon d’Or Feminin.

At the heart of all this, naturally, is her sublime talent, but even at the elite levels that apply in this instance, such talent is not unique. Others share her technical precision. Her aerial prowess. Not many, but some.

What has set Hegerberg apart, and kept her at the very zenith of her craft, is in combining that ability with an intense ambition to succeed and an almost obsessive focus on improvement.

From the moment, aged 11, when she determined that football was, in fact, her chosen path she has never once detoured into complacency, displaying a tenacity and self-belief that only champions possess.

When speaking with the Player’s Tribune, the forward was asked what advice she might have for young girls who hoped to one day make it in the professional game.  

“You can’t lose your fire. You can’t let anybody take your fire away from you. If you have big dreams, the fire is the only thing that will get you there.”

“Talent alone will not do it. Patience will not do it. You’re going to be tested and pushed to the limits of what you can take. You’re going to have to work just as hard as the men to get to the top of your sport, but for a lot less money. You’re going to cry. You’re going to throw up. You’re going to ache.”

Five years later, she revisited the periphery of this theme when The Athletic enquired about the technical details that explain her remarkable prolificacy in front of goal. Hegerberg attributed it to graft as much as craft.

“It’s years and years of training. When you get to the game, things happen automatically.”

“Sometimes, it’s hard to describe why you do something. And there have been so many goals where I’ve been thinking, ‘This is something that I’ve been working on since I was 12 with my dad’.”

A Principled Sacrifice: Changing from the inside

Now aged 30, there are still plenty more stories to be scripted by the Lyon star, for both club and country, but no matter what tales unfold one particular chapter will always hold prominence.

In 2017, increasingly exasperated by the poor treatment of female players in her native Scandinavia, Hegerberg informed the Norwegian Football Federation that she would no longer represent the national side. Or at least, not until significant changes were made.

“I don’t want to be too negative,” she explained at the time. “But I want to point to what the problems are, what is totally absurd and what can be done much better.”

“It is about respect. And I think women's football does not have the respect it should have in Norway.”

Her five-year exile from international football – a period that saw Hegerberg miss out on playing in the 2019 World Cup – was a powerful protest that jolted football’s establishments, to such an extent that Norway’s federation soon after signed a historic collective-bargaining agreement that granted equal pay to its male and female players.

Yet still her boycott persisted, the player insisting that money was never behind her decision. Instead, it was “about attitude and respect. We're talking about young girls getting the same opportunity as boys – giving them the same opportunity to dream.”

Some years later, having returned to the international fold, Hegerberg spoke to Suzanne Wrack of the Guardian about problems that still persist in the women’s game.

“Today, you see that there’s many, many different nationalities who struggle with the same challenges and who are forced to just take a stand, and I have a huge amount of respect for that. I wish it wasn’t like that."

“We’re not even talking about equal pay here, we’re talking about minimum conditions in order to feel that you’re being taken seriously and so you can actually perform at the level you want and need to be at.”

Giant Steps: Gravitas on and off the pitch

May 24, 2018, was a historic night for Lyon, the club securing a third consecutive Champions League triumph, courtesy of a 4-1 win over Wolfsburg. Almost inevitably Hegerberg was on the scoresheet, the player scoring 15 goals in the competition that year.

On the domestic front, similarly notable numbers were accrued, the striker firing 31 goals in 22 outings as Les Fenottes romped to yet another title.

For such sustained excellence there could have only been one winner of the inaugural Ballon d’Or Feminin that autumn, though the sublime Pernille Harder ran her close.

On taking the stage, and accepting her trophy, the most prolific forward in the women’s game said the following, as part of a stirring and erudite speech.

"This is a huge step for women's football. I want to thank France Football, for letting us have this opportunity. It's such an important thing for women's football and together we'll make a difference.

"I'd like to leave with some words to young girls all over the world. Please believe in yourselves."