WoSo_stan

Alexia Putellas in 2022: “I used to overhear things like ‘This girl has something.… She’s special.’ But I didn’t really pay attention. I just wanted to play. And I played whenever, wherever I could. If my parents were getting a coffee in the plaza, I would grab my ball and do shooting practice against the wall of the town hall and return to them sweating, begging for some water. I played in the street so much that I would get these big bruises all over my legs, and eventually my mum was like, ‘Right, we need to sign you up for a club for the sake of your legs!’ (It didn’t work, though. I still played on the street and the bruises continued. Haha!) My football career started with a white lie. My family took me to Sabadell, where a family friend was already in the team, but the minimum age was eight and I was only seven, so they had to ‘cheat’ a little to get me in. I remember my family used to take it in turns to do the half-an-hour trip to training after work. When it was my aunt’s turn, she would stick a helmet on me and I would go on the back of her massive six-cylinder motorbike. I was playing with girls who were like 11 or 12 and I would come home complaining to my parents that I couldn’t kick the ball as hard as them, but I loved it anyway. When I was a student, I still couldn’t get enough. I was studying at uni in the morning and training in the evening, but in my head I was already a pro. Back then, if I could’ve trained 24 hours a day, I would’ve done it.... Football has no gender. As a kid in Mollet, I was the only girl playing with the boys in the plaza or at the park, but there was never any problem. I never got told I couldn’t play, there were no insults. Nobody raised an eyebrow when this girl said she wanted to be a footballer. I know I’m lucky for the family I have and friends that I grew up with, but my experience is what it should be like for every young girl. The new generation needs to normalise this. Football belongs to everyone.... It’s all about supply and demand. Previously, people would question whether the demand was there for women’s football, but now it’s the supply that needs to catch up. In the 20 years I’ve been playing, the world has changed and it’s only going to keep changing. And if you think that the level of engagement in women’s football is good now, you are going to look back and laugh in a few years. It’s going to be insane.” playerstribu.ne/Putellas @alexiaputellas | @LC_Lionesses