At 24, Barbra Banda has already enjoyed an amazing career.
She’s played club soccer in four different countries, starting in her homeland of Zambia, playing in Spain and China, and now thriving in the NWSL with the Orlando Pride after joining earlier this year.
She’s the leader of Zambian women’s soccer’s golden age, captaining a side that features new Pride teammate Grace Chanda and Bay FC’s Racheal Kundananji. With 60 caps and 53 goals, she helped her national team to their first-ever World Cup in 2023 and Olympics in 2021, where she was the tournament’s joint-second highest scorer alongside Sam Kerr and Ellen White.
Within a matter of months in Orlando, Banda has established herself as the NWSL’s most prolific striker.
At the midseason break, she has 12 goals and five assists in 12 appearances (which puts her at a frankly ludicrous 1.4 goal involvements per game). She’s well on course to breaking the all-time league record for goals scored in a single season: currently Kerr’s 18 for the Chicago Red Stars in 2019.
And yet, as another Olympic tournament with Zambia looms, it feels as if the world of women’s soccer is still getting to know Banda.
We all know what she’s done this season – it's downright incredible. But how has she done it?
Banda's free role role
The Zambian striker's movement is not that of a classic No. 9. She doesn’t play up against center backs and doesn’t offer a clear reference point for Orlando’s attack. Instead, she enjoys what appears to be a free role within a highly fluid frontline, swapping positions with Marta, Adriana, and Julie Doyle.
She rarely drops deep for the ball, preferring to float higher and utilize the entire width of the field with an unpredictability that makes her all but impossible to mark. Defenders can never really know where Orlando’s primary goal threat will turn up next.
Banda loves to drift wide, where she can receive in space, turn, and go. She also runs the channels constantly. Possessing sensational speed, she gets herself into one-v-one situations that spell trouble for any defender. This particular movement comes with an added bonus of dragging a defender out of position, clearing space for her teammates arriving in the box.
