the women who love World Cup soccer : NPR

CeeCee Barrett, left, and Vina Nails owner Vy Nguyen, right, showcase their FIFA World Cup-inspired art at her salon in Houston, Texas, on June 26, 2026.

Danielle Villasana for NPR

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Danielle Villasana for NPR

At some point in our World Cup travels, as NPR journeyed from city to city talking to fans and watching games, producer Liz Baker pointed out a detail I’d missed: the beautiful, intricate soccer-themed designs on many of the women’s manicures.

This is how we ended up asking photographers to capture the gorgeous fingertips and fashions of the tournament. In Houston, when we got some downtime between games, we even visited several nail salons where customers were talking fútbol, ranking players and getting the elaborate flags and trophies on their nails that took hours to make.

Vy Nguyen walks through while painting nails at her salon, Vina Nails, in Houston, Texas, on June 26, 2026.

Danielle Villasana for NPR

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Danielle Villasana for NPR

Tune into World Cup coverage, and you are likely to see waves of male, screaming, sweaty fans. But one of the joys of covering this World Cup has been speaking to women who love soccer.

Details of Jalynn Garcia’s nails while being painted with FIFA World Cup-inspired art at Ciao Bella Nail Spa in Houston, Texas, on June 26, 2026.

Danielle Villasana for NPR

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Danielle Villasana for NPR

One of the first women I met on this journey was 22-year-old Zhraa Hamidy. We crossed paths in Dearborn, Mich., where I was working on a story about what it meant for the Iraqi-American community to watch Iraq play in a World Cup for the first time in 40 years.

As we spoke, Hamidy told me she had fallen in love with soccer at an early age and played through high school. She’d gotten a soccer scholarship to go to college, which is where the buck stopped: her father told her he felt soccer was not for women. She never took the scholarship. As she spoke, she was visibly sad.

I was shaken by our conversation. I grew up in Argentina, in a family of Argentine men obsessed with fútbol. My grandfather was a card-carrying member of one of the big leagues. I had a cousin who played in a minor league. My father, like a great many Argentine kids, had wanted to be a professional player himself (this is such a pervasive dream it even has its own name in Argentine culture: “el sueño del pibe”. Our very slang contained soccer terms: when you want to say “pay attention to me,” you say “hey, pass me the ball”; when something great happens to you, it’s a “golazo.”

As a kid, weekends were either for playing or for watching. I did both, but only as a child: I played obsessively, usually the only girl among the neighborhood boys (not counting a terrified girlfriend who would often be placed as goalie, where no one else wanted the job.) My father would join in and narrate the games as though they were World Cups. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of players, having watched greats like Argentina’s Diego Maradona and Brazilian legend Pelé out on the pitch.

Argentina fan Juana Olivera shows off her country’s colors in Miami, Fla. before the Cape Verde match.

Jasmine Garsd/NPR

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Jasmine Garsd/NPR

I discovered at a young age that it was one of the few ways I could connect with my Dad. But I knew to keep it a secret when, at 16, I secretly tried out for one of the biggest fútbol clubs in the country. He was a very strict man, and when he found out, he told me in no uncertain terms that soccer was no place for girls, and I was never to set foot in a pitch again.