The 24-year-old player Eleni Rittmann gave an interview this weekend to Joana Swan; during this interview she confessed to her that when she was younger, Ronaldinho was the football player she was inspired by, “When I was young in Switzerland, we didn’t know. I didn’t know about professional women’s football. I never saw something on the television or in the newspaper, so there was no opportunity for me to have a female inspiration.” With that perspective in mind, her goal is to inspire the next generation of women, this is why she is pushing women’s football on her social media. “I would like to have young girls to have a dream as a professional football player and that they can see that their dream can be a reality. Like it’s not just a dream.”

Eleni has more than 180 000 followers on her Instagram; when she started, she was not aiming to have such followers. She decided to start using it because of her best friend Ana Maria Markovik, a woman football player from Croatia, who pushed her a bit.  Now, she is really happy because she thinks they have a good influence on young player “They can see us as an inspiration and I think that’s what my goal.”

Plenty of players are using social media to grow some extra revenue, allowing them to have a more flexible calendar instead of having a second job and having a hard time adjusting the work and the training schedule. Is it the future of women football having to rely on being an ambassador or having a lot of sponsorship? She does not hope so, “I think in the future it shouldn’t be like this. It should be that you earn enough money from football because I only do the thing on social media that I earn enough money to live. I don’t know if I would do so many sponsorships if I would earn more with football. And for me, it’s in the 1st place. There is football and I want to focus more on football and not on Instagram.

As she never lived in France but has been playing in Austria; so, when we asked her if she came to France to play in the French league, what kind of question would she like to ask Ramona Bachmann, a Swiss player who played for Paris Saint Germain for years. She mentions the difference in the quality of life between France and Switzerland, “I never lived in France. I don’t know how the people are in France. I learned something about France from my agent, but I don’t really know any friends, people, so I’m really excited.”

The Euro will be taking place this summer in her country; we wanted to know how she will feel being an ambassador and promoting women football. “I feel really, really good. My dad always tells me because I always like why is it like this In women’s football, you don’t earn as much as a man you. It’s not that popular at the moment. And my dad always tells me, Eleni, you can be a woman who is a part of the changing process. And that makes me feel really good because I think I’m a part of the changing process and I hope in 10 years it will be different.

She was injured last year, when she mentioned her recovery, she did not hesitate to say that she was seeking a coach to help her return to playing football. “It was my second injury on the same foot, so it was really hard mentally for me. So I needed a mental coach to come back to my level and to come back on the pitch. But now I have been playing since February, and everything is good, so I think I’m even stronger than I was before.”

When we mentioned the future generation and what she would like to say to those littles girls who which to play football, she said, “just keep going, you do it. Don’t listen to the people. Because a lot of people still try to put some hate on women’s football.”