For a footballer from Keetmanshoop, Namibia, to thrive in Spain's premier division is as rare as a rainy day in the Namib desert, but Zenatha Coleman is no ordinary footballer.

Coleman, who plays for Sevilla and is currently Namibia's sole representative in a European top flight team [Ryan Nyambe plays for Blackburn Rovers in the Championship] has had a journey few would have anticipated.

For context: Keetmanshoop is a small city in the middle of the desert, in the hot and dusty ?Karas region of southern Namibia, with roughly the same number of people as Juneau, Alaska [around 30,000] and just as sparse.

For every one person in Keetmanshoop, there are approximately 16 in Windhoek, Namibia's capital, which is roughly the size of Newcastle in the UK. Neither Namibian city has produced many international football stars, male or female.

Namibia's women's team is ranked 143rd in the world and their players rarely move abroad. Annouscka Kordom signed for Israel's Hapoel Be'er Sheva last October, while Vewe Kotjipati has made her name for herself in Germany's lower leagues, but neither comes close to matching Coleman's level of league achievement.

But with the stardom comes the pressure from all sides, and nowhere does Coleman, 27, feel that more than with the national team, of which she is overwhelmingly the face and, by default, the voice.

As national team captain, Coleman has had to endure frustrating professional challenges, in recent years, and is usually the player others turn to for help, advice, and encouragement, even when she is as fed up as they are.

After the Namibian Football Association (NFA) failed to send the Brave Gladiators to the COSAFA Women's Championship in South Africa last year, supposedly for financial reasons, Coleman took direct and damning aim at the governing body on social media.

For context, Namibians, on average, earn around $500 a month, and that's taking into account that Namibia, like South Africa, is one of the more unequal societies on earth when it comes to wealth distribution so most people earn much less than that. Namibia has an unemployment rate of just over 20%.

Coleman told ESPN that despite being national team captain, she had not heard from the NFA since airing her concerns in public.

"I haven't received any email or call from the federation. They just went quiet on us," Coleman said.

"It pains me. Every time I have to come back home for national team [duty], the girls are unfed, there are no camps, the preparations are not going well. It affects me as much as it affects the team.

"I thought they would send [us] to the COSAFA [Championship] because it was a really great opportunity for us to earn a little bit of money. Most of the players don't work or study. They only rely on football. [The NFA] only sent the [U20] boys. It was very disappointing.