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Bob Marley instilled a love of soccer in his daughter, Cedella. Now she’s changing the lives of women and girls in Jamaica /
Football has consumed much of Cedella Marley’s life. But perhaps that should not 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.
“Sometimes, it would be the photographers who were out there, you know; sometimes, it would be the journalists and it would be the band against the journalists.
“I watched him growing up, I also watch my brothers, Ziggy and Steve. They played football growing up, too, and it was just always something that I loved. I love to kick a ball and was super competitive when my brothers would challenge me.”
Recalling advice given to her by Pelé, Cadella smiled broadly as she repeated the words the Brazilian all-time great told her: “The ball is round and always take the penalty.”
“So everything to me was a penalty,” Marley laughed. “I’d be like: ‘I’m just going for the goal,’ and that love is just something that is just in my DNA. I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
Read more: CNN