«All of us who are here have grown up thinking that football was not our place, that it did not belong to us. They have made us feel that way. As the years have passed, conditions have improved. People already know that this place is also ours and that we have been able to play a World Cup final. That we can be a benchmark is also making history ».
Irene Paredes (Legazpi, 1991) had her bracelet removed when she returned to the national team, but Barça’s Basque central defender acts as captain through thick and thin. She never hides, and if she showed her face after the disaster against Japan in the last game of the group stage, she also did so before the most important game in the history of Spanish women’s football. The Gipuzkoan, who made her senior debut in 2011, belongs to the best generation of female players that Spain has had to date, and symbolizes, along with many others, the historic step for women’s football that La Roja will play the final of a World Cup this Sunday against England, current European champions.
Spain is only 90 minutes away from achieving its first world star, and in eight years it has gone from dreaming of playing in the highest national team competition, after its debut in Canada 2015, to the possibility of winning it.
In the historic path that has led the team to the final of the oceanic event, Spain has been seen with soul, resources, which prioritizes the block and a lot of blackboard, where offensive alternatives, mental strength or the backbone of Barça These are some of the keys to success.
The parallelism with 2010
More than thirteen years after that unforgettable match against the Netherlands at Soccer City in Johannesburg, history is now repeating itself with the women’s team. The parallelism with the 2010 champion is unquestionable after both teams broke the psychological barrier they had suffered up to now with the curse of crosses.
The story took on another dimension for Del Bosque’s boys and is now replicated in the group led by the criticized Jorge Vilda, after a turbulent last year due to the schism of the 15 rebels, which began precisely after a defeat against England in the last Eurocopa, and the difficult reconciliation with several of them.
«If what happened has served to be here it is positive. It has made us all better. I would not change any of my twenty-three footballers for anyone, “says Vilda, who does not marry anyone and has used all her players in the tournament with the exception of the third goalkeeper, Enith Salón.
Among all of them, Aitana Bonmatí stands out, who after being one of the leaders of the famous revolt against the coach, returned to the team to lead it to the last step for eternity. “She is a player with whom I am completely in love with the way she plays, I would say that she is like the Iniesta of women’s football,” Pep Guardiola said of the Catalan attacker this Saturday.
The praise of the Manchester City coach continues with the similarities of that team that made its masterpiece in South Africa on a memorable July 11, and that was the achievement of a generation of players as extraordinary for their technical qualifications as for their desire to compete.
“The victory was the consequence of some factors that helped Spanish football rise above it, such as the training of the coaches, the facilities we have, the work that has been done with the youngsters, and ultimately, the structure of the Spanish football. The victory was a symptom of modernity and the fruit of years of work,” Vicente del Bosque, the technical architect of that unrepeatable team, acknowledged in his day.
The ‘school’ of that Spain is replicated in Jorge Vilda’s team, which maintains its interest in possession of the ball, although as it happened back in 2010, rhetoric could also get to them at some point in the camp, and they suffered a defeat against Japan, as in its day, passed against Switzerland, which today is seen as didactic based on what happened in both world cups. A setback that any champion can ever suffer as long as it is to learn.
Knowing how to pull yourself together after blows was just as key in Johannesburg as it was on the road to Sydney. The group continued with its vertical game and between the lines that has so characterized the ‘tiki taka’ to defeat whoever was in front. And if before they were Busquets, Iniesta, Xavi or Villa, now they are Abelleira, Bonmatí, Hermoso or Salma Paralluelo, the latter a player who last year at this time was proclaimed U-20 world champion and who is a faithful reflection of the generational change who lives Spanish football.
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