at Alexia Putellas sometimes it seems as if she was kissed by destiny. It starts on a small scale. She scored the first goal at the Johan Cruyff Stadium, inaugurated in 2019, the usual home of FC Barcelona women’s footballers. And she was also the first shooter when the women played in the 2021 Derby Espanol played at the Camp Nou for the first time. Then she paused briefly and looked up at the stands of Europe’s largest stadium. To where she used to sit with her father when she was a little girl.
Champions League favorites
Today Alexia – even the players in Spain are usually called by their first names – is above all a pioneer on a large scale. In November, she became the first Spaniard to win the Golden Ball for World Player of the Year. The FIFA award followed in January “the best“. Alexia, 28, is the outstanding player of the currently outstanding women’s football team: Defending champions Barcelona are favorites going into the knockout round of the Champions League, which begins on Tuesday (March 22, 2022) with the first legs. The Catalans will first travel to arch-rivals Real Madrid.
When they beat the same opponent 5-0 in the league last week, Alexia scored the first two goals. Barça secured the Spanish championship six games before the end – without a loss and with a goal difference of 136:6. However, Madrid are the only team that even forced Barcelona into a close match this season. In the Supercup semi-final it was still 0:0 in injury time. Of course it was Alexia who then scored the redeeming winning goal.
Xavi, Tiki-Taka and the love of football
She is actually a midfielder and sees her primary task in deploying her colleagues. Even as a child, say youth coaches, loved the Catalan Mollet del Valles in the province of Barcelona the typical “Tiki-Taka” of her heart club and was interested in tactical concepts. One of her idols was the then Barça playmaker and current men’s coach Xavi, in whose football school she spent several training camps in the summer.
“She feels the football with every atom of her body”, said Barça’s former women’s football department head Maria Teixidor. Having originally acted on the wing, Alexia later moved to the centre, “Omnipresent and able to initiate, shape and complete a play”like coach Jonathan Giraldez explained. Passion and a willingness to learn brought her there, because in reality her path was by no means predetermined.
She dedicates her successes to her deceased father
When she was little, there were only rudimentary structures in the girls’ offspring. She had to leave Barça at the age of twelve because there was no suitable team in her age group. About the local rivals Espanol and UD Levant she finally returned at 18. Her father Jaume, who had been enthusiastic about football as a child and had always accompanied her, had just died. The one, “For whom I do everything and who I hope is very proud of where he is: This is for you, dad.”
That’s how she put it during the Golden Ball awards ceremony, trophy in hand, her mother and sister with her. It was the evening when a broader public got to know her and her naturalness. “La Reina“, the Queen, since then she has not only been called by her teammates in the dressing room, but in the media across the country. Alexia has become a celebrity, spoken to on the street, hanging in large billboards on the boulevards and in the Barcelona’s Gràcia district recently received its own mural, raising the popularity of women’s football, which has been popular in Spain for several years, to a new level.
“Barriers torn down, the walls were”
Alexia isn’t looking for PR, but she’s embracing her role—for generations to come. “The Golden Ball reflects where we want to be and where we are going”, she says. As a role model, she wrote a children’s book about a girl who, like she used to, plays with the boys without it being a problem for anyone.
She was the first third football player to receive this after Johan Cruyff and Lionel Messi Creu de Sant Jordi, the highest award in Catalonia. The newspaper “Sport” sees her as a “symbol of the new power of women”. While the newspaper “As” paid tribute to her love of football – “even though you had to break down barriers that were walls.”
Another hurdle will fall when Barça’s women make their second appearance at the Camp Nou in next week’s second leg against Madrid. While no spectators were allowed into the stadium against Espanyol due to the pandemic, over 80,000 people are now expected. Alexia will then be able to look up the stands and know things are going in the right direction. And that this is her work too.