She succeeds Ada Hegerberg and Megan Rapinoe, and becomes the first Spanish to receive a Golden Ball since Luis Suarez in 1960. Monday, November 29, Alexia Putellas, the most capped player in the Spanish women’s selection, scored a little more l history of Hispanic football. Captain of Barça, she is now a source of inspiration for young girls, and even young boys, who dream of the same fate.
Captain, Alexia Putellas already had a very small soul in the playground: “At school, I formed the teams. Either I chose my partners, or I was chosen first”, she told the newspaper El Pais in 2014. Yet coming from a family fan of basketball, the young Catalan by birth is passionate about football from the age of six, and regularly goes to Camp Nou to support Barça. Without knowing it, years later she would become the club’s first scorer in an official match in this chamber.
If at 27, Alexia Putellas has already become a Barça legend, with more than 350 games and more than 150 goals in the Blaugrana jersey, her history with the Barcelona club could have remained a failure. In 2005, at the age of 11, after several years spent in the youth teams of Sabadell, she had joined the women’s section of FC Barcelona, but was not retained because her trainers did not find her at the level . After rebounding at Espanyol, where she played her first minutes in La Liga, then at Levante, where she scored 15 goals in one season, she finally caught the eye again of the Barcelona scouts who attracted her to strengthen their first team in 2012.
With Barça, Alexia Putellas experienced the professionalization of the women’s section in 2015, and therefore abandoned her studies in administration and business management to focus on football. That same year, her talent came to light as she scored 20 goals in 37 games. Since then, the midfielder has been one of the most decisive elements of her team every year. History could continue to be written as she extended her contract with FC Barcelona until 2024.
@alexiaputellas pic.twitter.com/WhuujyInHg
– FC Barcelona Femení (@FCBfemeni) June 27, 2021
Captain of the best Barça in history, author of the Liga – Queen’s Cup – Champions League treble last season, Alexia Putellas has proven herself and inspires the next generations of footballers. Last June, the player released a series of children’s books, titled Alexia Superfutbolista, and now, his jerseys are snapped up in the official FCB stores: “15 years ago little girls wanted to be Ronaldinho, and in recent years their idol has been unmistakably Lionel Messi. Messi’s jersey, in all children’s sizes, was the best-selling. But there are two or three years, a new trend appeared: young girls began to ask for the jerseys of players, and especially Alexia Putellas “, employees of these stores told ESPN last September.
Already the author of 9 goals and 9 assists in eleven league games this season, her success goes beyond the borders of Catalonia. With the Spanish selection, she became, on October 26, the most capped player of La Roja, with 91 games played. His dedication to the national team is no longer to prove: she has not planned to celebrate her Golden Ball too much to focus on the match that awaits her, against Scotland, on Tuesday night, in the 2023 World Cup qualifiers.