Ashley Cheatley Makes History With Nomination For FIFA’s Marta Award

A woman playing in the sixth tier in England has made history as the first-ever lower league player nominated for the FIFA Award for scoring the best goal of the year.

Now playing in the fifth tier after her club Brentford were promoted at the end of last season, Ashley Cheatley had no idea she would be shortlisted by the game’s governing body earlier this month and told me that she found out in highly unusual circumstances.

“I was in the bath, funnily enough. I’d just finished work and I thought ‘let me just chill and relax’. Then I had a Teams message come through from one of my colleagues, she said ‘oh, you’re a star’. I thought maybe she’d just seen the goal. Anyway, when I looked at this link, it had FIFA branding on it, I didn’t know what it was.”

The Marta Award was inaugurated last year by FIFA as a prize for the most beautiful goal scored by a female player in the preceding year. Named after the legendary Brazilian forward, Marta herself was fittingly the first-ever winner of the award last year and has once more been shortlisted herself for a goal she scored for Orlando Pride in the NWSL.

Previously, the Puskás Award was handed out to the best goal scored by all players. A woman had never won but several have been shortlisted. However, since its creation in 2009, no player from outside the top two leagues of any country has been nominated for either award.

That all changed earlier this month, when Brentford’s Ashley Cheatley made the headlines as one of eleven women nominated for the FIFA Marta Award. Her stunning flick up and overhead kick executed in a Women’s FA Cup tie against Ascot United last November was put alongside those scored by the some of the global stars of the game such as Marta, Vivianne Miedema, Khadija Shaw and the world’s most expensive player, Lizbeth Ovalle.

Had her strike not been caught on camera, Cheatley’s goal would only ever been seen by the 502 fans in attendance at the Bedfont Sports Club. She is quick to appreciate that she has only been nominated for the Marta Award due to the social media buzz created as a consequence and wanted to show her gratitude.

“Everybody at Brentford really since the goal has gone in. Social media, luckily for me, they’ve captured it. It’s just blown. Everybody that has showed support from a year ago up until now. I’m thankful to everybody – staff, because I work at Brentford as well – everybody.”

As well as representing the women’s team, Cheatiey is also an employee of the club, providing technical support for their online ticketing platform. She told me what the reaction has been from her colleagues. “I actually booked this week off. Then the day I took the annual leave, that’s when everything came out. I’ve not been back, but I’ve had a lot of messages from loads of people. They’re just showing their support and trying to get in as many votes as possible.”

Unlike the majority of the eleven goals nominated, predominantly long-range strikes, only Ovalle’s goal can match Cheatley’s for an outstanding piece of improvisation and technique. The Brentford striker explained to me what was going through her head as the ball was passed to her by team-mate Maddy Phillips. “Because of the height of the ball, all I can remember is it being the perfect height to just land on my thigh.”

“All I’ve needed to do is just flick it up, because the defender’s on my left. The way the ball was spun and the way I’ve positioned myself, it sort of just happened. I wouldn’t say when the ball was coming to me, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I didn’t. I just had to deal with what was in front of me and, luckily for me, it all panned out.”

The 30-year-old has played out the majority of a previously unheralded career in the lower leagues of the English pyramid. She admitted “I didn’t really know too much about this sort of award, I just go out and play football. To obviously see all the facts that are coming out now, I’m like ‘wow, okay this does happen’. I’m just taken aback by it all really. I’m glad that I can put Brentford on the map a bit more and obviously represent such a great club. I’m forever thankful, It’s nuts.”

Now propelled into the international spotlight, Cheatley told me she could easily have been lost to the game. “At under 11, I was at Hanwell Town as a youth, then went on to QPR. I stayed there for a bit then I just sort of fell out of love with football. It wasn’t until I was around 16 years old, that I picked it up again. Brentford was hosting trials and I thought ‘why not?’”

“I then was scouted for Millwall, I just remember turning up and playing with these players and thinking, ‘I am not good enough. There was no way I should be here.’ Where I’d been out of football for so long, my confidence was probably not there and I just gave up.”

In 2015, she joined Ashford Town and helped them achieve successive promotions into tier four. She was then brought back to Millwall for the WSL 2 Spring Series before returning to Ashford where she stayed until signing for Brentford.

If invited to the glittering award ceremony by FIFA, Cheatley is adamant she would attend. “100%, I would go, you can’t turn an opportunity like that down. I would have to take my mum or my sister. They’ve been there since day dot. If I could take my whole family, I would. Everybody has always turned up at my games – rain, wind, sun, snow – they’re there.”

Fans can vote on the 2025 FIFA Marta Award here until December 3.