Do we like them?

Do we like Marta Vieira da Silva?

Our score: 8 out of 10. A long record of speaking up for women and equality, with no harmful words or acts found, though our search of the record was not exhaustive.

Marta is the player Brazilian women's football was built around. She debuted at the 2003 World Cup at 17, and she is Brazil's top scorer with 119 goals, plus a record 17 World Cup goals. She is also a six-time FIFA World Player of the Year, and she still plays for the Orlando Pride in the NWSL.

The good stuff is not only trophies. In 2010 the UN Development Programme made her a Goodwill Ambassador, and she said she would push the anti-poverty goals with an emphasis on women's empowerment. At the ceremony she said she constantly thinks about the ones who did not get the chances she had.

Her best-known fight is for equal treatment. Around the 2019 World Cup she turned down a new boot deal that did not offer what male athletes get, and she wore a gender-equality symbol on her boots instead. In Sydney in 2021 she said women in Brazil still face barriers from “misogyny and prejudice” in sport and in life.

On the harm check, we found nothing against her. We found no campaigning against any group, no conspiracy-theory slide, and no dodgy company. When PinkNews covered her 2024 engagement to a teammate, it quoted her saying she wants to make the world better “for everyone, with no exceptions.” The record is open on that: we did not find anything either way on trans issues, so we can't say more than that.

On the good-person test, the searches found no lawsuits and no allegations against her. What did come up was a red card and a suspension at the 2024 Olympics, which is a football matter. Nothing new has turned up lately that we could confirm. She came back into Brazil's squad in 2025, and she has said she plans to play on for a couple more years.