Coming off a treble win, the hardest thing to do is to do it all again. Since the first group of women came together to play at the Camp Nou in 1970, the road to glory was a long one. It took until 1988 for Club Femení Barcelona to join with other clubs to form the Primera División, and it wasn’t until 2001 that CF Barcelona became a full-fledged part of FC Barcelona.
Unlike many other teams in Spain who are not yet professional, the Femení finally became professional in 2015. This after winning the domestic league four times, the Copa de la Reina four times, and the Catalan Cup on five occasions. Since then, the trophies have continued coming in, with last year’s treble bringing the total to 27. Now the team that everybody wants to beat, what’s next for the Femení?
The answer is somewhere between freshen up what’s already there and keep as much continuity as possible. Okay, so maybe not that much continuity. At least on the players’ side, only club captain Vicky Losada and Kheira Hamraoui have left so far this summer, though they will likely be joined by a few others.
Alexia Putellas, who has been in the first team since 2012, becomes the new club captain at the ripe old age of 27. Veterans Marta Torrejón and Sandra Paños join her as vice-captain and 3rd captain respectively, with 23-year-old Patri Guijarro impressing her teammates enough to make her the 4th captain.
Also for continuity’s sake, general manager Markel Zubizarreta, who has been in charge of women’s football since 2017, has renewed until 2024. Prior to signing his renewal, he did have to deal with the unrest surrounding Lluís Cortés. After watching the Champions League trophy celebrations, you would have thought that the 34-year-old Cortés could have built a dynasty at the Johan Cruyff Stadium. Instead, a division between he and his players led to him stepping down and the promotion of his assistant of two and a half years, Jonatan Giráldez.
Giráldez is even younger, not turning 30 until November and younger than five of his players (Melanie Serrano, Jenni Hermoso, Torrejón, Ana-Maria Crnogorčević, Irene Paredes). Giráldez was a major part of the team’s mission last season and is well aware of the pressure and challenges of the job. Most interestingly, the job is for one season with an option for a second. The club is clearly thinking in the short-term and putting the pressure on Giráldez to earn himself a longer contract.
Zubizarreta has struck gold in the last three seasons with his signings, having brought in Carolina Graham Hansen and Asisat Oshoala, as well as the return of Jenni. The increased roles of youth products Aitana Bonmatí and Patri has been just as important, adding structure and balance to an already star-studded team.
The Femení will hope that Zubizarreta’s newest signings, Ingrid Engen and Fridolina Rolfö from Wolfsburg, and Irene Paredes from PSG, can all fit in with the competitive locker room and keep the team at its high heights.
Engen is a 23-year-old Norwegian midfielder with a style more comparable to Melanie Leupolz of Chelsea Women (sans the errors in the UWCL final) than any of her new midfield teammates. She can score the occasional goal, but her hard work in possession and without the ball should compliment Alexia and Bonmatí well. There is a sense that the team will want to avoid burnout this season, especially with some players having played in the Olympics, and any club in the world would be lucky to have the “challenge” of rotating Alexia, Bonmatí, Engen, and Patri.
As for Rolfö, a 27-year-old winger who was part of the Swedish team that recently upset the U.S. women at the Olympics 3-0 in the group stage, she will have a more difficult time than Engen to get minutes in the Femení front three. Barring a transfer out – Jenni, Mariona Caldentey, Caroline Graham Hansen, Asisat Oshoala, Lieke Martens, Bruna Vilamala, Candela Andújar, Clàudia Pina, Giovana Quieroz, and Rolfö will all be battling for three spots. It’s unlikely that all of Vilamala, Andújar, Pina, and Gio will stick around for the season with loans being highly likely, but they are being given a chance to earn a spot.
Most likely, of that whole bunch, the foursome of Mariona, Martens, Graham Hansen, and Rolfö will rotate between the two wing spots. I don’t need to look it up – no club in the world can boast four players of that caliber on the wings. Rolfö is less of a goalscorer than the other three and doesn’t create as much as Graham Hansen, but she is a player that defends a bit better than the others and is known to score the occasionally timely goal. She did convert the only goal against Barcelona in the 2020 single-legged semifinal, the one that took Wolfsburg into the final.
Speaking of facing Barcelona in the Champions League, PSG’s Irene Paredes has returned to Spain to claim a spot as one of the Femení’s starting centre-backs. The 30-year-old is not only captain of the Spanish national team, but also won the Spanish league with Athletic Club in 2016 and the French league with PSG last season. Barcelona’s all-out pressure sometimes leaves the backline exposed, and Paredes was arguably the best player available to remedy some of those issues. She is one of the top players in the entire world in the air, and getting her on a free transfer was a tremendous piece of business.
The team is currently working through their preseason and looking ahead to the Gamper Trophy double header with the men’s team, as they will both face Juventus at the Johan Cruyff Stadium in a little over a week.
Dan Hilton is an American journalist, broadcaster, and current Editor-in-Chief of BarcaBlog. Extensive work as a play-by-play broadcaster, producer behind the scenes, and quite average player in his younger years has given him a well-rounded and informative perspective on the sport. Alongside BarcaBlog founder Francesc, Dan started The Barcelona Podcast in 2017
