BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — If the women's soccer players of Spain have gone from nobodies to title contenders in less than a decade, it hasn't come easy.
The national team has had to fight for better coaching, decent travel conditions, and modern training facilities.
It paid off with a World Cup title in 2023, the Nations League crown last year, and on Sunday they face England in the European Championship final.
“It has been a constant with the national team that we have had to fight for acceptable work conditions that would allow us to play at our best,” former Spain defender Marta Torrejón told The Associated Press by phone on Friday.
Torrejón lived through the lean years, the time when playing for her country felt like, in her words, a “waste of time.”
And she knows from talking with Barcelona teammates who still play for their country how much things have improved.
Torrejón retired from international soccer after the 2019 World Cup as Spain's then most-capped player with 90 appearances. The 35-year-old has since helped Barcelona win three Champions League titles and a slew of other trophies.
She also played a part in one of the revolts Spain’s women have staged to demand more from the men who run the game.
After the 2015 World Cup, Torrejón and other players successfully pushed for the removal of coach Ignacio Quereda, who had run the team for nearly three decades, for his poor preparation ahead of the team’s first appearance in the competition.
Quereda was later accused by former players of verbal abuse, an allegation he denied.
“I enjoyed playing for the national team, but the preparation and attention to the player was minimum. It felt, to put it bluntly, like a waste of time,” Torrejón said. “The level of practice and the level of physical training both plummeted compared to what we had (at Barcelona). It was like taking a step back.
"I am told that isn’t the case now, and I am very glad to hear that.”
Torrejón said she saw steps in the right direction under former Spain coach Jorge Vilda, who replaced Quereda, but felt there was still more untapped potential in the team when she retired.
After Torrejón quit the team, some players announced in 2022 they would no longer play for Vilda unless he ran a more professional operation. He was backed by the federation. Some players returned to play for him, and the team made history by winning the 2023 World Cup.
The celebrations were overshadowed by the behavior of then-federation president Luis Rubiales, who kissed a player on the lips without her consent during the awards ceremony in Sydney.
Vilda supported Rubiales initially and he was swept away with his boss when the players stood up to force change, from the removal of Rubiales to improving the travel conditions and handling of the team. Vilda is now coaching Morocco, which is playing Nigeria in the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations final on Saturday.
Torrejón said she had heard from Alexia Putellas and Irene Paredes, stalwarts of Spain and Barcelona, that things are better since Rubiales and Vilda left.
New coach Montse Tomé has enhanced the training methods. Spain leads the way at the Euros for goals scored, ball possession, passing accuracy and clean sheets.
In Spain's 1-0 semifinal win over Germany, Aitana Bonmatí leaned on the team’s analysts, who informed her the opposing goalkeeper tended to leave her near post unprotected. The result was an exquisite winner from a tight angle.
Torrejón said that sort of tactical insight from the staff was unthinkable a decade ago.
Barcelona and other clubs have lifted Spain
Spain midfielder Patri Guijarro agrees with Torrejón that the sustained investment Barcelona has provided for the past decade in the women’s game has boosted the national team.
“Each and every day we work well in our clubs and I think that is reflected in the achievements of the clubs but also in the national team,” Guijarro said at Spain’s camp in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Friday.
Guijarro also credits the professionalization of Spain’s women’s league in 2021, which allowed players “to dedicate ourselves fully to soccer.”
Guijarro is one of 11 Barcelona players on Spain’s 23-member squad. The Barcelona contingent includes Bonmatí and Putellas, who have split the last four Ballon d’Or awards between them.
Former Barcelona official Xavier Vilajoana oversaw the women’s team and the club’s training academy from 2015-2020. During that time, the club dramatically increased its funding for women’s soccer and built a training program for girls.
Vilajoana said one critical decision was having the same coaches train the boys' and girls' teams. That way the Barcelona style was instilled in all the kids, and that ball-possession, short-passing and pressure became fundamentals of the women's teams as well.
“Let’s not fool ourselves, we spent many years in a very sexist society and that was reflected in women’s soccer. So clearly the change in the mentality of society has helped," Vilajoana told the AP. "But I also believe that Barça’s style of play has helped us see women players in the same way (as men).”
‘We had talent’
In the background, Spain's strong feminist movement helped get the public behind the players as they made strides for equality and success.
“There were many of us players who gave it our all for the national team but weren’t able to get this far," Torrejón said. "The one thing we knew is that we had talent. We just needed more support.”
___ AP sports writer Graham Dunbar contributed from Lausanne, Switzerland.
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Joseph Wilson, The Associated Press
