“Winning the World Cup” always sounded like an impossible wish, an unthinkable desire in the mouths of the players of the Spanish team. But those from Vilda have won the World Cup by playing soccer, throwing the ball onto the grass and displaying a technical richness that makes them akin, not only in the list of winners, to those world champions of tiqui-taca in South Africa. because this Spain, beyond the epic, has not met any better soccer team in the entire World Cup, except for that reactive win against Japan. And so this title, beyond the heroic of the conquest, is an enormous act of football justice because no one has treated the ball better. History will say that a goal by Olga Carmona, once again the Sevillian, raised this team to Olympus, adding this achievement to the list of great feats of a Spanish sport, which should stop looking at the gender of its protagonists to celebrate it in the same way. form in the stands, the streets and the media.
I don’t know if Jorge Vilda is very intelligent or the opposite. But the pulse he maintains with his players has turned this World Cup into something more than a sporting matter for some footballers whom he has challenged to show that they can win “despite your coach”. Despite the contextual joy of the achievement, Vilda’s relationship with the players remains cold and strictly professional. A fracture that is still open and with a bad solution for the coach, because as Napoleon warned “battles against women are the only ones that are won by running away”. Her tenacity knows no bounds.
“Win a World Cup”
In this Cainite Spain in which many sports leaders repeated not long ago that “women’s sport is neither sport nor is it feminine”, we have spent days reading and hearing praise for the women’s team from people who do not even know if they are pronating or supinating. “Win or lose, they are already champions”, repeats a mantra that has become commonplace of those columns, opinions and editorials. However, If something was important to this group, it is precisely that, to show that they are capable of “winning”. That’s why they’ve been fighting all their lives, that’s why they fought Vilda. To fight for titles, “to win a World Cup”, not just play it.
No one doubts that beyond the sporting result they will leave a legacy with the vital teaching of their fight against the cultural and social machismo they have faced by choosing the quintessential heteropatriarchal sport, soccer. But As athletes they are, they know that the glory of victory surrounds you forever, while defeat is a stain that is difficult to erase. That is why since the World Cup began they have only verbalized one objective: “Win the World Cup.” A purpose that to some, the first server, seemed excessive for confusing the unthinkable with the impossible. Big mistake. Fortunately.
For this final against the English, the best possible rival because there were pending accounts and that sharpened the fang of ours, Vilda moved the eleven again, leaving Alexia out to place Salma. Putellas has lived a discreet World Cup, in football and in the media. Something that has generated an undisguised frustration. And on the day of the final, the coach entrusted himself to his fittest players. The litany of the eleven that will go down in history was recited like this: Cata Coll, Ona Batlle, Irene Paredes, Laia Codina, Olga Carmona, Aitana Bonmatí, Tere Abelleira, Jenni Hermoso, Alba Guerrero, Salma Palalluelo and Mariona Caldentey.
Trap to Bronze, Olga’s goal
Spain showed from the start that they were better with the ball at their feet. The English were more aggressive, more physical. On his bench emerged the figure of Sarina Weigman, the druid of women’s soccer. In ours, Vilda, the ‘villain’. The ‘pross’ warned with a shot to the crossbar, but the Spanish teamed up well on the inside and moved better on the outside. They were able to score in a play in which Salma and Alba forgave, but after half an hour Mariona set a trap for Luzie Bronce, an English winger who plays with her at Barça, opening the door for her to go inside, where they stole the ball, quickly bringing the play to his lane, which was empty. There Olga Carmona appeared to nail a dry and low shot down, where she stings the goalkeepers the most. Goal that put Spain ahead and forced England to go out into the open. To propose more. To risk. Just what you don’t like. Salma touched the second by slapping a ball that rested on Earps’ stick in the last play of the first half. Everything was going smoothly…
A sharper England came out of the dressing room, how could it be otherwise. Weigman put the most different player from him on the pitch, Lauren James, and accumulated more players in the middle to short-circuit Spain. They were minutes of gritting our teeth and being patient looking for spaces without making mistakes. And they did it by adding arrivals that worried the English. to the point of generating a penalty that Tori Penso had to ratify going to the VAR for a handball from Walsh on an arrival by Mariona. But Jenni Hermoso couldn’t beat Earps, who was right with the intention of the Pachuca striker.
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The setbacks followed one another with the untimely injury of an impeccable Laia Codina, who left her place to Ivana Andrés. After such a long and tortuous road, it couldn’t be that easy… But the Spanish women stood firm behind. The game had accelerated, it had more revolutions, more twists and turns. Spain had lost control of the ball, but not of the final because Vilda’s team knew how to suffer. They tried to come out playing and cool the match before the exercise of English impetus.
The final quarter hour of discount was a sweet epilogue to a story worthy of a Hollywood script. Spain made the field wide, Alexia stepped on the grass and the match died closer to the Earps area than that of a Cata Coll who never thought she would be the world champion’s starting goalkeeper the day she got on the plane in Barcelona on her way to New Zealand. This victory is a story of improvement, faith and football talent that should be an example for a country that is a little more plural today. They are world champions, even though they have already won the hearts of all. The girls already have their star.