Ada Hegerberg asked to twerk on stage after winning inaugural women's Ballon d'Or

Norwegian forward Ada Hegerberg was named the inaugural female Ballon d’Or winner, given to the world’s best female player in 2018.

That’s the most important takeaway.

The second is that Hegerberg, upon acceptance of the trophy and a short speech at a gala in Paris on Monday, was still faced with blatant sexism when she was asked to twerk on stage after sharing her appreciation for this “huge step for women’s football.”

Hegerberg becomes 1st female to win award

For the first time in the award’s 62-year history, the Ballon d’Or was presented by France Football to both a male and a female player.

Hegerberg, 23, plays for the French side Lyon and is a three-time Women’s Champions League winner. She scored a tournament-record 15 goals for Lyon in the Women’s Champions League last season and notched 42 goals over 25 regular games. She has 250 career goals in the league.

Her recent honors include the 2016 Uefa’s Best Women’s Player award and 2017 BBC Women’s Footballer of the Year.

A committee of 45 journalists pick the winner from a group of 15 nominees. Two National Women’s Soccer League players made out the top five in votes.

Pernille Harder (Denmark/Wolfsburg), Dzsenifer Maroszan (Germany/Lyon), Marta (Brazil/Orlando Pride) and Sam Kerr (Australia/Chicago Red Stars) filled out the top five.

Hegerberg outspoken about girls’ soccer

Hegerberg has been vocal about soccer in her homeland, Norway, and the differences between girls and boys in the country.

She told The Guardian last year:

She stepped away from playing with Norway’s national team, citing longstanding frustrations over the state of women’s soccer there.

In her short acceptance speech Monday she referenced the support some have given women’s soccer, including France Football.

“It’s a huge step for women’s fútbol and the work you put down is such an important thing for women’s fútbol and together we’ll make a difference,” she said.

Emcee asks world’s best soccer player to ‘twerk’

And then this happened.

Emcee Martin Solveig asked Hegerberg, newly anointed best female player in the world, if she could twerk for them. Because no matter the heights a woman reaches, she will always be valued for certain things.

It was gross and disrespectful, and what we all know she is well capable of doing is drilling a soccer ball pretty darn hard. It’s lucky she didn’t have one in this case.

That face says it all.

What was a huge step was taken back a notch and unfortunately Hegerberg, as with everyone watching, is reminded that no matter how high up a woman goes or what new ceiling is broken there will always farther to go. That is the key example of what female athletes face on a near daily basis.

Luka Modric of Real Madrid won the Ballon D’Or on the men’s side. It was not addressed if he could twerk for the audience or not.

Emcee responds with apology

Solveig took to Twitter shortly after the gala, and long into the social media uproar, to apologize and clarify.

“This comes from a distortion of my English level and my English cultural level, which is obviously not enough because I didn’t mean to offend anyone and I didn’t know that this could be seen as such an offense,” he said.

Solveig seems to be saying he wanted her to dance to Sinatra, but honesty, that doesn’t make it much better. He called it a joke and “probably a bad one.”

It’s not a bad joke. It’s not a joke at all. It’s disrespectful to a woman winning an award for being a premier soccer player.

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