The Spanish Spanish Soccer Team began with good footing its journey in the Eurocup of Switzerland, with a Clara win against Portugal to add its first three points in group B, and with an ‘MVP’ for one of its stars, a Putellas Alexia that comes with desire to this tournament, a kind of rematch for the Mollet del Vallés, again one of the great referents of the team that runs Montse.
Surely, FC Barcelona’s football career changed just three years ago, on July 5, 2022. already consecrated as one of the best, if not the best, players in the world, as a Golden Ball and the way of the second consecutive, that day, he heard a damn Crac, “the sound of a branch when breaking”, as he recognized in a recent interview to ‘The Guardian’. I already knew that the anterior cruciate ligament of the left knee had been broken just three days after the ‘red’ against Finland in the Eurocup of England, delayed one year by the Coronavirus pandemic.
The Catalan already had on her legs the continental championships of 2013 and 2017, in addition to the 2015 and 2019 World Cups, and she waited for that appointment on English soil, where Spain arrived wanting to make the final leap. But his decline, and also the previous one of another key piece such as the front Jenni Hermoso, second in the Golden Ball of 2021, diminished the options of the national team, bitterly eliminated in the quarterfinals and in the extension by the host.
Alexia Putellas arrived at that euro. Futsalistically his level touched excellence and international level had made history days before the event by becoming a friendly against Italy, the first Spanish footballer to reach 100 internationalities, but his career had to stop to face a long way of almost a year.
Considered as one of the best talents that the base football of Spain, double champion of U-17 Europe (2010 and 2011), runner-up of Europe U19 (2012) and third in the U-17 World Cup (2010), was released, premiered with 19 years with the absolute days of the Euro of 2013 and shortly after he made his first goal, special, and code because he served to win in the premiere to England beyond the 90th minute.
Since then, 34 more targets have arrived, last Thursday in the debut in this Eurocup against Portugal, 3-0, some that evidenced all its quality in a clash where it achieved 85 percent success in the pass and the ‘MVP’ prize of the match as a captain in the absence of Irene Paredes.
Ten months after his injury, Alexia Putellas once again stepped on a pitch, did it with FC Barcelona against Sporting Club Huelva at the end of April, and could enjoy the conquest of the Champions League against the German Wolfsburg, leaving in the final compasses, and with the sources in the Blaugrana team on a stellar bonmatí bonmati.
Despite not being at his best level, Jorge Vilda did not hesitate to include it in the list for what would be the historic World of Australia and New Zealand, and started in three games, two in the group stage, before Zambia and Japan, and in the semifinals against Sweden. In the final, he left in the 90th minute and was able to celebrate a title with rematch aroma on the grass.
From there, the road continued somewhat steep. A new knee arthroscopy forced him to stop and, despite being summoned, he could not play a minute in the conquest of the 2024 Nations League, while in FC Barcelona he could not get his place of yesteryear with Aitana Bonmatí, Patri Guijarro and Keira Walsh occupying the midfield. This trio played the beginning of the Champions League in San Mamés against Olympique Lyon Francés, but the clash reserved a role to that of Mollet del Vallés, author of the final 2-0 in the added time.
Of the bitter Olympic penalty to be a candidate again to the Golden Ball
Alexia Putellas celebrated him with a kind of liberatory joy, a happiness turned into bitter months later when in the historic Olympic Games in Paris he did not succeed with the penalty that the game sent to the extension beyond the 90th minute against Germany. An appointment where he already recovered his ownership in the ‘Red’ and where he scored two goals, against Nigeria and Brazil in the group stage.
This past season, the Catalan midfielder has met again with part of her best football, surely not at the level she had in July 2022, but enough to turn it back into a differential into a field of play and to be indisputable both in FC Barcelona and in the Spanish team that now wants to lead in a Eurocup where it starts as one of the strongest candidates for the title. In fact, forecasts place the ‘queen’, an already world icon, as one of the favorites to a third golden ball.
“I am not going to deceive you, it is a competition that I had between eyebrow and eyebrow after the injury I had the day before starting the last Eurocup. I have a lot of desire, I have prepared a lot of time for this moment and above all to enjoy it, which I think is a very beautiful competition,” he warned before setting the Eurocup, recognizing that since that infamous 5 of July 5, he was a better Alexia. ” “This year I have enjoyed a lot and the challenge is to continue lengthening that feeling for this Eurocup and helping the team to the fullest,” he said.