Four years ago, Spanish women’s football changed forever. For the first time, a team was proclaimed world champion. It was the U-17 team, which won the world title with Toña Is on the bench and Claudia Pina as the great figure of the team, Golden Ball of the tournament. That success was a boost for all the advances that came later, such as the professionalization of the league, and also for the careers of the players, some like the Barcelona striker, already established in the elite. Now, Spain has the opportunity to give new impetus to women’s football and to a promising generation in a new U-17 World Cup final (this Sunday at 3:30 p.m., on GOL Play), in which it defends the crown against Colombia with the goal of making Spain the first country to win two consecutive editions of the tournament. It would also be the second country after North Korea to win two training World Cups in the same year, adding the title won by the U-20 team in August.
🛤️ We could tell you how the road to the final has been…
😌 But we believe that there is nothing better than our players doing it.
🎤 From India:
#U17WWC. pic.twitter.com/59V7s8OYoM— Spanish Women’s Soccer Team (@SEFutbolFem) October 29, 2022
Spain aspires to a historic double thanks to the success of two generations that, with their differences, maintain the common denominator of talent. In 2018, the rookies Claudia Pina, Cata Coll and Eva Navarro, also champions of the European Under-17, wore smiles with braces and freckled faces, like any other girl her age. Now they are women over 21 years old and their dream of becoming professionals has come true. Fourteen of the 21 members of the 2018 team currently play in the First, F, four of them in the Second Division, and another two in the United States, the mecca of women’s soccer. Pina, the leader of that litter, is the one that has had the most brilliant progression, forming part of the senior team in the European Championship last summer, and one of the most important pieces of Barcelona. The only blur of this generation is the case of Irene López, who decided to retire at the age of 20 due to anxiety.
Now, a new fifth of girls arrives stomping. Despite their youth, nine of the 21 players in the current squad have already made their debut with their clubs’ first teams. Three of them, Sandra Villafañe, Cristina Librán and Marina Rivas, belong to the Madrid CFF, the largest women’s football academy in Spain and Europe with more than 30 training teams and more than 400 players. “We have noticed a great growth in terms of the talent of the soccer players and as the base of the pyramid has grown, the competition, the sports level, has grown enormously. The direct consequence of this is that the players who are now reaching our first teams are better than their predecessors were at their age”, they explain in the Madrid CFF coaching staff.
Possibly, the greatest pearl that has emerged from the Madrid club’s academy is Vicky López, a petite midfielder (1.60m), with curly hair, who manages the team’s beat as if she had been in the elite all her life. Last season, López became the youngest player to debut in the First Division at 15 years, one month and ten days. This year she has moved to Barcelona, where she continues to break records. Last month, she became the youngest Barça player to debut in the First Division at 16 years, 1 month and 19 days, beating her teammate Claudia Pina, who did so at 16 years, 5 months and 2 days. “Vicky is one of the greatest talents that Spanish football has seen and she has everything to mark an era,” they affirm from Madrid CFF, where she still hurts the departure of her great youth project.
López represents some players who look at themselves in the mirror of their predecessors, but have better conditions for their progression. “The new generations have grown up in a professional environment since they were six years old and this is noticeable”, they point out from the Madrid CFF. Now, this fifth wants to show that the efforts of previous generations bear fruit with a new World Cup.
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