The forward, still only 22, has proved a big success in France but has grown so disillusioned with women’s football in her homeland she has turned her back on the national team

When Lyon’s Ada Hegerberg finished the season with a third consecutive Champions League winner’s medal she threw down the gauntlet, tweeting: “Hey @Cristiano can you score one more tomorrow?” As she latched on to a Shanice van de Sanden cross, scoring her side’s third as they defeated an exhausted Wolfsburg 4-1 in extra time, she matched Cristiano Ronaldo’s 15-goal haul for the 2017-18 campaign.

Stop knocking the World Cup’s female commentators. They know their stuff | Lianne Sanderson Read more

In doing so Hegerberg beat her previous 14-goal tally to secure the record for the most goals in a Women’s Champions League season. “It was an ambition for me at the start of the season,” she says. “My preparation had gone well. I was in good shape. The team was in good shape.”

“A lot of people talk about records but you can get lost as a player if you think too much about them. I think more about preparation than numbers. If I’m well prepared, there will be results. So I try to kick ass and work hard in the moment and I know the record will come.”

The Norwegian closed her record-breaking campaign by committing her future to Lyon, signing a new three-year contract (an unprecedented length in the women’s game) which keeps her in France until 2021.

“You can only have a short sight because things change a lot,” she said. “You can’t plan what the years will bring. But right now Lyon is the best club in the world, where I can get the best out of myself and become the best, so for me it was not a difficult choice. I always try to live in the present and take everything day by day to become a better version of myself. Lyon is where I’m able to do that and signing for another three years just made sense.”

Life with the French and European champions feels an age away from when her goalscoring prowess first began to turn heads in Norway. “I started at maybe seven years old but I really got into it at 10, maybe 11.

“I grew up playing with boys, that was a natural thing for my sister [Paris Saint-Germain’s Andrine Hegerberg] and me. We played with boys until we were at least 13 or 14,” she said.

The Hegerberg sisters both joined the Toppserien side Kolbotn and in August 2011 Ada Hegerberg became the youngest player to score a hat-trick in the league’s history, aged 16, and finished the league’s top scorer. The pair then joined Stabaek where Ada again finished top scorer with 25 goals in 18 games.

Recognised as two of the best talents in Norwegian football, the sisters chose to move to the German side Turbine Potsdam when the opportunity arose and Hegerberg is increasingly dismayed at the future of women’s football in her home country: “Football is the biggest sport in Norway for girls and has been for years but at the same time girls don’t have the same opportunities as the boys. Norway has a great history of women’s football but it’s harder now,” she said. “We’ve stopped talking about development and other countries have overtaken us.”

Lyon, she says, made their move for her in the summer of 2014. “The best club called me and wanted to know if I wanted to go there and play and I was like: ‘Yeah, I’m totally doing this.’ The best players were there, I thought it was a dream. I knew it would be tough to get a spot in the team but I knew I had to trust in my own qualities and go for it.”

In 2016 the poster girl of Norwegian football picked up Uefa’s Best Women’s Player award as Lyon won the treble, following it with BBC Women’s Footballer of the Year in 2017, while her longstanding frustrations over the state of women’s football both domestically in Norway and with the national team led to an announcement that she would be stepping back from the latter after the country’s Euro 2017 exit.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hegerberg (white shirt) in World Cup action for Norway in 2015. She has now quit the national team. Photograph: Dennis Grombkowski/Bongarts/Getty Images

With no sign of an end to the impasse, one of the world’s best could disappointingly be missing from next summer’s World Cup in France. Yet, since taking the decision and focusing on her club football with Lyon, she seems to those watching to be happier on the pitch, as if lifting the weight of international pressure, expectation and frustration at the system has freed her just to enjoy playing and to find a home in France.

With over 250 career goals and three Champions League, Division 1 Féminine and Coupe de France titles to her name, it is easy to forget Hegerberg is still only 22.

So what does a player who has achieved so much and with years of football ahead of her do to stay focused? “My ambitions are all about improvement. Every year I analyse the previous season with those closest to me; Thomas my fiancé, my sister and my parents.

“That’s how I find out which areas I have to keep on improving and areas where I have to consolidate,” she says.

Getting space from football is also important: “I live in a really beautiful city and try to relax as much as possible when I don’t train. When we’re not with the team I train a lot on my own. Every day I need to have some distance from football. I read a lot. I don’t study, so I read everything; novels, biographies, anything really.

“This is how I think. It’s a lot about the mental side. During summer training with my sister Andrine and my dad I’m very concerned about results that build high self-confidence and wellbeing. My philosophy is that you have to build stone on stone and, when you reach a high level, you have to work to stay there.”

If the boot doesn’t fit then female footballers should have an alternative | Anna Kessel Read more

Talking points

• Newport County will host the crunch Women’s World Cup qualifier between Wales and England on 31 August. England are currently one point behind Wales in qualifying Group 1 having played a game less. The Lionesses face Kazakhstan on 4 September for their final qualifying game.

• Manchester United have announced the appointment of Willie Kirk as assistant coach to Casey Stoney. Kirk was manager of Bristol City and his side finished eighth in the league in 2017-18. The new side will kick off for the first time with a behind-closed-doors pre-season friendly against Liverpool on 15 July.

• Reading have recruited Sunderland’s Rachel Laws to replace Wolfsburg bound Mary Earps. They have also been boosted by the news that Jade Moore, Jo Potter and Remi Allen have each committed to Kelly Chambers’ squad ahead of the 2018-19 season.

• Rachel Yankey has joined the coaching staff at the second-tier club London Bees. Luke Swindlehurst, head coach of London Bees, said: “I’m confident with Rachel’s experience from elite environments we will only benefit from having her with us.”

• Arsenal have signed the 25-year-old midfielder Lia Walti from Germany’s Turbine Potsdam. The Swiss international has 54 caps. Joe Montemurro, Arsenal’s manager, said: “Lia is a fantastic midfielder. She will give us another experienced option in that position.”