Manon Melis

Gabriëlla Maria "Manon" Melis (Dutch pronunciation: [ɣaːbriˈjɛlaː maːˈrijaː maːˈnɔ ˈmeːlɪs]; born 31 August 1986) is a Dutch manager of women's football development at Feyenoord and a former professional footballer who played as a forward. She spent most of her professional career playing in the Swedish league Damallsvenskan, which she won three times with her club LdB FC Malmö, in 2010, 2011, and 2013. Melis also won the Swedish Supercup with Malmö in 2011, and was briefly with the Swedish teams Linköping and Göteborg. She was the Damallsvenskan top scorer three times, in 2008, 2010, and 2011. In 2016, she moved to the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) in the US, playing for Seattle Reign for one season, before retiring from professional football.

At age 17, Melis made her debut for the Netherlands national team in 2004. Her scoring helped the Dutch qualify for their first major tournament, the UEFA Women's Euro 2009, where they reached the semi-finals. In the tournament, she scored a crucial goal in the final group game against Denmark to send her team into the knockout stage. At Euro 2013 in Sweden and the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup in Canada, she played all seven combined matches for her country but did not score. When she retired from playing international football in 2016, she had earned 136 caps and scored 59 goals. She was the all-time top goal scorer for the Netherlands national team from 2010 to 2019.

Melis has been the manager of women's football development at Feyenoord since 2017 with the aim to create a first team that competes in the Dutch Eredivisie and is supported by youth and reserve teams. She achieved this goal when Feyenoord Women fielded a team in the Eredivisie for the first time in the 2021–22 season. Her father is former Feyenoord player Harry Melis.

Gabriëlla Maria Melis was born on 31 August 1986 in Rotterdam. Her father is Harry Melis, a former footballer who played as a winger in the Dutch Eredivisie for Feyenoord, ADO Den Haag, and DS'79. At a young age, she expressed her desire to follow in his example. She started playing organised football in 1993 for RVVH in Ridderkerk, where she initially played in the girls' team. The Royal Dutch Football Association soon suggested that Melis play with and against boys, a scheme the association had introduced in 1986. She enjoyed the more challenging environment up to the highest youth teams. Girls playing football was still somewhat unusual at the time and she later said that her direct opponents were often ridiculed by their teammates for having to compete against a girl. Melis later said that most of her teammates on the senior national team had played on boys' teams in their youth.

During her childhood, Melis appeared as a ball girl during a national team match at the Sparta Stadion Het Kasteel. She supported Feyenoord, one of her father's clubs, from an early age and has said that Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Henrik Larsson were her favourite players during her youth.

After turning 18 in 2004, Melis moved to the senior level. She continued to play for RVVH but was no longer allowed to play on mixed teams and had to switch to the club's women's team. She was joined by Leonne Stentler, who had also played for RVVH's mixed youth teams. Stentler, who went on to earn 16 caps for the Dutch national team, later said that the drop in level had negatively affected their motivation. Other internationals at the club were Jeanine van Dalen and Sandra Muller. For two seasons she played in the Hoofdklasse, the Netherlands' highest amateur league of women's football. There was no professional league in the Netherlands at the time. The women had to arrange their own travel to away games; unlike for the men, the club did not organise transport for them. RVVH did not win the league during Melis's tenure.

In 2006, Melis received an offer to play in the German Frauen-Bundesliga, for Duisburg, but declined. She wished to focus fully on football, but this offer meant that she would also have to find other work, which seemed daunting because she was unable to speak German fluently. She decided to stay in the highest Dutch league and accept an offer from Be Quick '28 in Zwolle, because of their more intensive training regime. She joined Sylvia Smit, with whom she had played on the national team, in attack. Melis only played for Be Quick for a few months.

In January 2007, at age 20, Melis moved abroad to play professionally for LdB FC Malmö in the Swedish Damallsvenskan. She later recalled that the women's game was far more advanced in Sweden than in the Netherlands, both in terms of professionalism, exemplified by the frequency and intensity of training, and media coverage. Malmö had finished in fourth place in the twelve-team league the previous season and signed her to challenge defending champions Umeå IK. Among the other players on the team were Ásthildur Helgadóttir, an Iceland international, and Caroline Jönsson, Sweden's goalkeeper. In Melis's first home game, against Örebro in front of 1,013 spectators, she scored twice. In her first season she scored ten goals, and finished as the club's top scorer, ahead of Helgadóttir, but her tally was surpassed by Lotta Schelin of Kopparbergs/Göteborg FC who scored 26. Malmö finished third as Umeå retained the championship.