The bus from the Mollet club, the improvised cheers, my father at my side and my aunt a couple of rows behind. My grandfather’s anecdotes repeated over and over again. Also my shirt, the first one I had, with the 6 and my name, and the 3 with my sister Alba’s, both numbers, a photo of our ages in the year 2000. Those memories are what Barça represents for me: an abstract feeling that only
The memory is curious. From the first time I went to the stadium I don’t remember anything about the game, when today, as a professional soccer player, it would be what would attract the most attention to me. On the other hand, I never forget that first trip. I was six years old and I got on the bus from the Mollet club, sitting in the aisle, with my father next to me. There was commotion, excitement, the expectation typical of those who make a club a place of belonging. I remember they did a cheer, but not the result I said. And recently my aunt told me that she thought that first game was the derby against Espanyol.
I also remember that children’s imagination has no limits. If they tell you that one day you will be able to reach the moon, then you believe it. Now, beyond one game, I don’t know if I would have believed that one day I would be able to play at the Camp Nou. Nobody ever told me: perhaps because adults were aware of the improbable. How were they going to encourage me to dream of playing at the Camp Nou
Time passed and playing as a child became my lifestyle. The road was not easy: I had to leave Barcelona because there were not enough teams, I came back, the women’s team became professional and we won the first Champions League in the middle of the pandemic. It was then the first time I stepped foot in the Camp Nou: immense, but cold. Solemn.
The following year, everything changed. And nothing changed: I was back on a bus. This time, not with me buff of Super3 nor to chase the Avi of Barça for a photo. She was dressed in a Barcelona tracksuit and was going to the Camp Nou to play a Champions League match. It was not a derby, but a classic. When the bus stepped onto the Diagonal, I started to see hundreds of people walking around wearing Barça shirts. I thought it had nothing to do with us, that it could be a coincidence. But when we turned down the street from the Sofía hotel and headed towards the stadium, I no longer had any doubts: that number of people with scarves in the air, flags waving and singing the Barça anthem was for us.
She was sitting by the window and had Jana behind her. I turned around and said, “I don’t know if I want to play or be with people more.”
Since she was the captain of the team and was first in line to go out on the field. The staircase to the locker room tunnel is steep and only allows you to see a fragment of the stadium and a piece of sky. With each step you climb, that fragment becomes larger, until a coliseum appears before you. At that moment, I thought: “Come back, you have to play a game.” But I didn’t allow myself to get excited. Out of respect for the fans, out of respect for the girl who went to the field as a child.
The atmosphere at women’s matches is different from that of my childhood: families, young girls and boys, also older people. A broad, diverse, plural audience. And getting bigger. In the run-up to that classic against Madrid, with more than 90,000 tickets sold at the Camp Nou, I had to speak at a press conference: “It is the beginning of a new era.” Barça is a historic club and that night had a global echo, in a legendary football stadium. A football that does not understand gender.
Solemn or bustling, empty or vibrant, from the stands or on the grass, the Camp Nou is, for me, the coach trips, the adrenaline of playing in front of thousands of people, my sister’s shirt, the memory of my father. The only way to materialize a feeling. And that is immense, much more than its imposing structure. Much more than a football stadium.
Alexia Putellas She is a player for FC Barcelona and the Spanish national team. Winner of two Ballon d’Ors, a soccer World Cup and three Champions Leagues. This article was previously published in the Quadern supplement.
