Barbra Banda: The softly-spoken Zambian goal scorer making noise with Orlando Pride

There is a certain genre of athlete we all know: a total force of nature on the field, someone whose exuberant performances stand head and shoulders above their peers, someone who seems like they must be nine feet tall should you ever meet them based on how their game looks on a screen and how they make fans feel through their sheer ability.

And off the field? Quiet, sometimes introverted, uncomfortable in the public eye.

In person, Barba Banda folds herself into her office chair for an interview seeming a little bit smaller than her official 5ft 10in height. She’s softly spoken, a little shy — at least with new people. 

There are a lot of requests on her time these days, but she still doesn’t seem totally comfortable with a camera or a microphone pointed at her.

She’s become one of the faces of Zambian soccer both at home and in the United States and is followed by Zambian fans from game to game.

The soft-spokenness should not, by any means, be mistaken for a lack of ambition. Banda has asserted several times that she wants to become the best player in the world and this year, at 24, she was placed on the 30-player Ballon d’Or shortlist, ultimately finishing 12th overall in the voting.

“I didn’t even know about it because I was practicing, so it was just announced when I was here in the gym,” she said. “I was shocked.” Phone calls from home started pouring in.

In Orlando, with her 13 goals and six assists so far (second overall behind Kansas City’s Temwa Chawinga), she is a one-player highlight reel, responsible for almost 30 per cent of the team’s total goals.

She has done exactly what Orlando hoped when they paid her massive transfer fee and brought her to the club for 2024; head coach Seb Hines said that, in terms of pure numbers, if a team can find a goalscorer who puts up at least 10 goals in a season then it makes you a playoff contender. The Pride are far more than that this season as the league’s shield winner and No 1 playoff seed.

Banda grew up in Lusaka with her five siblings and, like so many children worldwide, became enamored of soccer playing informal street games with her peers from the age of seven, sometimes going barefoot on a dirt field.

Her mother disapproved of her daughter playing to the point Banda where would sometimes sneak out by throwing her cleats out of her bedroom window, go out the front entrance, and then walk around and pick up the shoes.

“My oldest sister used to know,” Banda said. She grinned. “But she would just keep quiet.”

When Banda was 11, boxing caught her eye as well. Again, her mother did not approve. She wanted her daughter to focus on school. But Banda had talent, and perhaps even more importantly, she had determination.

She would go to school as usual, then train at soccer or boxing, then home, then back to school, day after day. She didn’t have much time to socialize outside her routine, so most of her friends were also in training. 

Her main focus was soccer; to her she was doing boxing “just for fun and for fitness.” But she was good at boxing too. She developed a fierce uppercut, the strike in her toolbox she said she was most known for being able to throw with heat.

Still, soccer loomed large over everything.

Her mother finally relented when Banda joined Bauleni United Sports Academy and she saw her daughter playing regular competitive matches. 

One of Banda’s academy coaches would pick her up to take her to the academy so that she didn’t have to take public transit, a bus trip with a transfer in the middle that took about 45 minutes to an hour one way.

“It was a time where my mom came to understand,” Banda said.

Banda moved to Green Buffaloes in the Women’s Super Division, then Logrono in Spain, and then to Shanghai Shengli, all in four short years.

She was just 21 when she scored a hat trick in the Tokyo Olympics against the Netherlands, a feat all the more impressive not just because it came in a 10-3 loss against an overwhelming opponent, but because it is remembered just as much — perhaps even more so — for putting Banda on the international map as it is for the lopsided scoreline. A year and a half after that Olympics, Orlando came knocking.

Though she made an instant impact and began scoring goals in NWSL, it was not a totally seamless transition.

The Chinese Women’s Super League is not NWSL, and apples-to-apples comparisons of players from one league to another are difficult for players and scouts alike.

“The way I used to play in Shanghai is not the way I’m playing here. It’s a different football, different philosophy of how the team wants you to play and everything,” she said.

She stays a little higher for Orlando than for Shengli, and doesn’t have to cover as much wide ground. In her highlight reels from that period, it’s clear that many teams’ defenses simply couldn’t keep up with her, either in terms of speed or in tracking her on the dribble.

But many of the elements that served her well at Shengli have translated, such as that ability to pick up the ball in the final third, the willingness to take a cheeky touch around the goalkeeper, and her positioning in front of net.

In Orlando, Banda is a morning person.

She rises, does some daily prayer — thanking God for another day, she says, and asking for protection for her family — and on game days will put on Zambian gospel music.

On practice days, she heads to team facilities for breakfast. It’s one less meal she has to cook for herself, although Banda says she’s a fair cook. She and Zambian teammate Grace Chanda will cook food from home once a week or so, often making nshima to go with a beef or chicken dish.

She hemmed and hawed a little bit when asked if she was the better cook, eventually demurring with, “Not really. But I’m good.”

The question apparently caused a minor uproar as Banda and Chanda found out what the other had said about who was better at making dishes from home. Emily Sams, also in the room at the time, offered to judge a cook-off.

Chanda, who sat down to talk about Orlando after Banda, confidently declared herself the winner ahead of any contest.

Having Chanda with the team, even if she’s still rehabbing a quad injury left over from the Olympics, has been good for Banda. It’s always nice to have someone from home, with Chanda counting Lusaka as her hometown, too.

She’s the extrovert to Banda’s introvert, a big character on the team who’s been making the most of her downtime with music and local entertainment and even a quick trip to Miami to see friends.

Banda insists that she is the on-time friend and Chanda is the late friend.

“I think she’s slow in doing things,” Banda said.

Chanda refuted this instantly. “If we are going somewhere, like downstairs, our apartment, maybe she’s going to do her hair — then I’ll say, ‘Go on. I’ll come later.’ But coming for training, me? Always on time. Barbra, sometimes she was complaining when we are doing activation, ‘You come late.’ Then I was like, ‘You’re lying!’ Sometimes even her, she’ll come late.”

After practice, Banda will call her family, although it’s not always easy with the six-hour time difference and her schedule. They are not long calls. “When I feel like it’s close to the game, I need to have enough rest, so I don’t take much of my time on the phone,” she said. Her focus remains firmly on soccer.

When Banda is clicking, she feels impossible to contain. It’s not just her speed; it’s her willingness to dive alone into the final third, her fearlessness in taking defenders on the dribble, or the patience to bait out the keeper.

In a May home game against the North Carolina Courage, she was involved with most of the Pride’s four goals as either scorer or contributor.

And even though her goalscoring has cooled post-Olympics, she draws plenty of attention that simply opens up the way for teammate Marta, who has also had an outstanding 2024 and is right behind Banda with nine goals and an assist for the regular season.

Playing with Marta was a pot sweetener for Banda. “I still get inspired from her — the way she’ll talk to me, the way she will encourage me,” she added.

“That keeps me moving, and it’s always motivating me the way she’s playing. I think we are coordinating well… She’s always singing in the locker room. She’s dancing. She’s just vibing each and every time. I’m like, ‘Oh wow.’”

After a breakout 2024 NWSL, it’s only a matter of time before Banda has her own cadre of younger players trailing after her with wows of their own.