Alexia Putellas, a pioneer to drive change

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A Eli Segura, her mother, they did not let her walk quietly by Mollet when she went to work, while she, Alexia putellas, she woke up proud in Seville after having slept next to a Ballon d’Or. And from Paris, abandoned the pomp of a gala full of glamor, to the La Cartuja lawn to wear the shirt of the Spanish team.

“This has just begun,” the captain of Barça and Spain happily proclaimed to have such a precious ball in her hands. He wasn’t just saying it for her. Not much less. She caressed him (“it is an individual award”), but did not arrogate it to him (“it is, without a doubt, a collective success and I feel that way”), although she was aware that her pioneering condition gives her an essential role in the fight to provide the right conditions for women’s football.

“This has just begun, it is a before and after”

Alexia Putellas, Barça player

A football that lives deep contradictions. Installed in the world elite (Alexia putellas it was the first and Jenni Beautiful, Forward of Barça and the national team, he took second place), but without the visibility and professional consideration. “This is a before and after & rdquor ;, he shouted with dignity from the most mediatic plate that you can have – football was gathered at the Parisian Theater du Chathêlet – to defend the rights that women still do not have when they play a game.

Alexia putellas she feels “privileged”. It is number one in the world, after being crowned by UEFA as the best in Europe this past summer, the image of three brands (Nike, Visa and Hublot) and has just been renewed by Barça until 2024 after winning the treble. Although she does not have, for the moment, the social and even political activism of her predecessor in the Ballon d’Or, the North American Megan Rapinoe, nor does she have the media impact that the Norwegian Ada Hegerberg radiated, the first to kiss such a precious ball.

She, shy at the beginning, has rebuilt herself as a footballer (she started as an extreme left-hander, now she is inside and with a goal), also acquiring a firmness in her speech, full of unquestionable arguments.

She feels privileged and does not refer only to that award but because she lives in the Barça ecosystem, a model of success, stable, coherent and well argued under the direction of Markel Zubizarreta. But that is, unfortunately, an exception in a country where the hidden face also stands out, symbolized in the hardships that drown, and in an unworthy way, Rayo Vallecano.

Both clubs coexist in the same competition, but they live different universes. In Vallecas, the players are installed in insecurity. They don’t even have a doctor, as was seen when Athletic’s doctors had to treat the Chilean Camila Saéz for a blow to the head.

The shout rayista (“how long are they going to allow this situation? We can’t ask for more! Respect and dignity,” he tweeted Paula Andujar) is swallowed up by institutional silence. Of the club and the organizations that surround the structure of women’s football.

Play for the memory of your father

Alexia putellasIn her emotional Parisian speech where the use of Spanish and Catalan coexisted before a global audience, she had the vindictive tone of a woman committed to her trade. And with his passion.

He had nothing written on him, as his mother recalled. Nor was it necessary because she has been playing for the memory of her father for almost a decade, who died when she was 18 years old. He knew by heart what he meant. And who wanted to tell.

“There are no excuses for everyone to have the right to dream of being a footballer and to do so with decent conditions to be a professional”

Alexia Putellas, Barça player

“There are no excuses for everyone to have the right to be able to dream of being a footballer and to do so with decent conditions to be a professional,” demanded the new Ballon d’Or, determined to defend its teammates, invested as it is now with moral authority and, above all, the media that provides it with that new status.

No agreement for the professional league

Once the summit was reached, and after traveling a path full of winding curves (when she was 12 years old, she had to leave Barça because there was no place for her, reception at Espanyol first and Levante later, exemplary clubs in the construction of the football story female in this country), wants her voice to be heard. Alexia does not speak of Alexia.

He talks about those who are now playing in a tournament, the Iberdrola League, with little media visibility, in permanent disagreement unable to reach a consensus in these last six months on statutes to constitute the future professional League. There is no glimpse of an imminent pact that allows an election to be called to choose the figure that will start this championship.

The players, and Alexia between them, of course, they are already tired. Two weeks ago they expressed their outrage that progress is not being made on this crucial issue for the future of women’s football. From fatigue because there is no solution, they went on to gestures, interruption of 30 seconds and after a minute in league matches, together with the fact that the Real Sociedad and Levante footballers covered the patch of the federation’s shield with their hands. And floating in the environment until the possibility of a strike, irritated as they are because nothing is progressing.

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Hours after the Golden Ball, the Generalitat de Catalunya awarded Alexia the Creu de Sant Jordi

The lights of Paris are turned off and while the individual recognitions are not stopped (the Generalitat de Catalunya awarded him the Creu de Sant Jordi hours after the Ballon d’Or), Alexia follows his own, endorsing with energy the idea of ​​two of his teammates at Barça (Andrea Pereira and Patri Guijarro), who together with the lawyer Amanda Gutierrez, Today they launch the FUTPRO, a union specialized only in women’s football. The ball that will inhabit the house of Alexia putellas It’s made of gold. But not everything else.



Reference-www.elperiodico.com

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