.jpg) Pereira in 2014 | |||
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Jasmine Henrietta Pereira[1] | ||
| Date of birth | (1996-07-20)20 July 1996 (age 29)[1] | ||
| Place of birth | Auckland, New Zealand | ||
| Height | 1.68 m (5 ft 6 in)[1] | ||
| Position | Forward | ||
| Team information | |||
Current team | Three Kings United | ||
| International career‡ | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| 2012 | New Zealand u-17 | 3 | (0) |
| 2014–2016 | New Zealand u-20 | 4 | (0) |
| 2014–2017 | New Zealand | 10[2] | (0) |
| ‡ National team caps and goals as of 10:32, 16 June 2015 (UTC) | |||
Jasmine Henrietta Pereira (born 20 July 1996) is a New Zealandfootballer who plays forThree Kings United and forNew Zealand women's national football team.
Pereira is the youngest and only girl of four children of aSamoanPalagi couple, Joseph – a formerrugby leaguer who played for Sydney'sWests Tigers – and Danira. She's cousin to the actorsJoe andRene Naufahu, who like uncle Joseph also played rugby. A native ofWest Auckland, Pereira soon grew an interest in sports, particularlyWWEwrestling, which she watched and tried to imitate with her brothers, andnetball, her primary sport until the age of 13. OnceAvondale College made students choose one sport to focus on, and netball had a long sign-up queue due to many girls interested, Pereira opted to attend football classes instead. She was first assigned as agoalkeeper, due to her background in netball, but after her coaches saw Pereira run, she became aforward. She only finished school at the age of 18, sidelined by her football career and life incidents such as the death of her father. Pereira is studying psychology atMassey University, using a scholarship funded by the government.[3][4]
Three years after enrolling on Avondale's football program, Pereira was a part ofNew Zealand women's national under-17 football team that competed in the2012 FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup inAzerbaijan, playing all their three matches. With the U-17, she also was runner-up of the 2014National Women's League.[5]
In 2014, Pereira was promoted to theunder-20 team, winning the2014 OFC U-20 Women's Championship, and subsequently playing all of New Zealand's four matches in the2014 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup.[6] The next year, Pereira was the captain of the New Zealand team who won theOFC U-20s, and was given the Golden Ball as the best player of the tournament.[7]
Pereira made her debut with thesenior New Zealand team, the "Football Ferns", at the2014 OFC Women's Nations Cup. Team managerTony Readings was interested in Pereira ever since the U-17, highlighting her speed and "competitive edge".[3] In 2015, she was called to the New Zealand roster for the2015 FIFA Women's World Cup,[8] where she played two out of New Zealand's three matches.[9] Pereira was also named for the Football Ferns team that would play the2016 Olympics, being the youngest player in the squad and the only one alongsideMeikayla Moore who never attended another Olympic tournament.[10]
Some time after the2017 Cyprus Women's Cup, where Pereira scored her first international goal,[11] she announced to be stepping away from the national team, finding hard to balance the football with financial commitments, that forced her to move in with her mother and take two jobs.[12] Working with her brother in civil construction, Pereira eventually became a qualified builder.[13]
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