Lieke Martens of FC Barcelona voted Best Player in Europe

Lieke Martens, European Champion and member of FC Barcelona voted Best Player in Europe (Photo Credit Asif Burhan).

*Asif Burhan talked with Lieke Martens after she accepted her award for Best Player in Europe.

Lieke Martens of FC Barcelona, a European Champions and now voted the Best Player in Europe, if I’d said any of those things to you three months ago, could you have dared to believe it could be true?

No, it’s still unbelievable for me. I really enjoy every moment. If you said that before, like three months ago, I couldn’t believe, I shouldn’t believe you and now it’s real. I’m living the dream actually.

Less than three weeks since the tournament finished does it still feel like a dream or have you had time to process it and are you ready to move on with the new season?

It was already a big honor to be nominated, like Pernille Harder and Marozsan are both really good players and they also achieved also a lot in their career so far so yeah it’s a big honor to win this trophy.

We saw pictures of you training with Barcelona for the first time. You first moved abroad when you were 18 and you’re now settling into your fourth different country, what’s the most difficult things when you go to a new country?

The most difficult thing is the language. I speak now four languages so the fifth’s going to be Spanish and I’m going to do my best as quick as possible to learn that language.

In England, it was big news when Toni Duggan moved to Barcelona. Do you know her from before, have you had a chance to meet her and do you understand her English?

Toni Duggan? Yeah we are talking so much to each other, we are in the same hotel now and we like share some moments with each other. She’s a really nice girl.

I wanted to ask you about Pernille Harder, you talked so well about her, what do you think about her as a player?

She’s an amazing player, she had a great tournament, I know her also from Linköping when I played in Sweden and I always been looking to her that she’s one of the best players in the world and yeah, it’s a big honour that I win this trophy but the other two are also really good. Probably she will win once.