“Now it’s time for the 2023 European Championship”

The Gondomar multipurpose pavilion has a duende. The Spanish women’s futsal team turns everything they touch on the parquet floor of this Portuguese city into gold. The national team coached by Claudia Pons won the European Championship in 2019 in this setting and repeated it last Sunday, this time in a penalty shootout (1-4) after the regulation 3-3 against Portugal. And there the two players from the Region of Murcia, Mayte Mateo (Cartagena, 28 years old) and Noelia Montoro (Mula, 24), already double European champions, experienced a ‘déjà vu’.

The celebration of the title lasted until the wee hours of the morning in this city, within the capital of Porto. The expedition flew yesterday at noon to Madrid, where the Federation and the president, the investigated Luis Rubiales, entertained them in a brief act at the Las Rozas headquarters. They also attended numerous media outlets, such as ‘Marca’ and ‘As’. With “only four or five hours of sleep” on top of that, Mayte Mateo from Cartagena picks up the phone. This second European, now celebrated by the 2020 pandemic, tastes like glory for the natural girl from La Palma. Claudia Pons recruited her again, after overcoming two serious knee injuries. She first went under the knife in July 2019 and then in December 2020.

«I have arrived a little fair, in conditions. I have always said that the Mayte Mateo of 2019 was physically fantastic and at a very high level, but little by little I am returning to being the same as before, ”the STV Roldán player tells LA TRUTH. She is the captain and emblem of the Roldanense club, champion of the League and Europe under the sponsorship of the company JimboFresh.

They will continue on STV Roldán

On June 30, Mateo, a CAFD student, terminated his contract with STV Roldán. This last season the team came close to the final of the league title, falling in a very close semifinal against Burela (3-2). Cartagena wants more. «I want to enjoy the moment, he deserved this championship, it is the reward for work; I am happy, enjoying myself and without getting injured. Everyone knows my future, Roldán is my home and we have to wait for it to come out on social networks. I would like to repeat that ‘playoff’ and fight for the league title », he maintains.

“Now it’s time for the 2023 European Championship,” adds the muleña Noelia Montoro, hoarse [«gritamos mucho en la final»], which also leaves the door open for its third season on STV Roldán. The next European appointment with the national team is in March 2023, at a venue yet to be determined. “We are ambitious and we want more, we are going for the next European Championship,” says Montoro, who is also studying a master’s degree in Physiotherapy. The mule has “many messages from townspeople” still unread. Waiting for that European Championship, Mateo and Montoro live in the present. And this passes, again, through the gold bath in the Gondomar pavilion.