Spain’s icon, the world’s best female player, discusses her journey back from injury and going to the Euros to compete for ‘the trophy we are missing’
‘I
t wasn’t my knee that hurt, it was my soul,” the Queen says, but now she is back. There is a look in Alexia Putellas’s eye, a light. “You know that feeling, that sense of security when it’s like you’re capable of anything?” the double Ballon d’Or winner says, leaning forward on a sofa at Spain’s Las Rozas HQ.
“At that moment, I felt it. And now I’ve got that feeling once again. I’m happy; the desire for these Euros is huge. I can’t wait to start, to go and give my everything.” And Alexia Putellas’s everything is everything.
These are her third Euros – she scored a 94th-minute winner against England on competitive debut in 2013, aged 19, although she does not remember if she was given the goal – an indicator of how far she has come. Not only since 2013 but since the last time too. Switzerland stands as a kind of redemption, a reclaiming of her place after an English summer, and so much more, was taken from her by a torn cruciate suffered at Bisham Abbey a day before Euro 22 began.
