Football has consumed much of Cedella Marley’s life. But perhaps that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
As the daughter of global reggae icon Bob Marley, who was a renowned lover of the Beautiful Game, Cedella was never far from a soccer ball growing up. Had he not been a musician, Cedella recalls her father telling her, he would have wanted to be a soccer player.
“Daddy played every day,” Marley told CNN Sport. “He would play anywhere he was: on the road, you’d find a field, you’d find a team.”
Though she has loved soccer for as long as she can remember, for many years, Marley’s involvement in the game didn’t extend beyond kickabouts with her father and brothers.
But that all changed in 2014 when one day her son came home from school and handed her a flier, saying that his soccer coach had asked him to deliver it to her.
“I’m reading it … I’m like: ‘Wait, Jamaica has a women’s football team? Where did this come from?” she said.
Six years earlier, in 2008, underfunding had led to the Jamaican Football Federation (JFF) disbanding the women’s national team program. The flier Marley’s son brought home was a fundraising request from the JFF to help restart the program. Marley got to work almost immediately, calling the federation the following morning to ask what it needed.
Through a combination of the royalties earned from recording a song, a GoFundMe page and becoming an ambassador and sponsor of the women’s national team through the Bob Marley Foundation, Marley says they raised $300,000 in the first year.
The women’s team disbanded again in 2016, but Marley never wavered in her commitment to the program. In 2019, her efforts – and the work of countless others who were equally as dedicated to the cause – culminated in the women’s national team becoming the first Caribbean country to qualify for a Women’s World Cup.
Marley’s work has helped not only improve standards and conditions for players, but also helped shift the country’s attitude towards the women’s national team.
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