Alexia Putellas

📍Mollet del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain

“Alexia Putellas Segura was born in February 1994 in Mollet del Vallès, a town of about fifty thousand people in the Vallès valley north of Barcelona, the elder daughter of Jaume Putellas and Eli Segura. Her father was a devoted FC Barcelona fan, and Alexia grew up a Barça supporter too, travelling with the Mollet supporters' club, the penya, to watch matches at Camp Nou with him. She has a younger sister, Alba. She was always playing football, in the playground at school, in the streets and squares of Mollet, usually as the only girl among boys. Her father was her biggest supporter, driving her to training and matches. At seven she joined the youth teams of CE Sabadell, a nearby club with a girls' section, where she played for four years. At eleven she joined FC Barcelona's youth teams briefly, and then RCD Espanyol, where she came through the youth ranks and made her senior debut at sixteen, in 2010. Her father died in 2012, shortly before she joined Barcelona's first team, and she has said that she plays to honour him. At Barcelona she became the heart of the team, winning many league titles and three Champions League trophies, and in 2021 she became the first Spanish woman to win the Ballon d'Or, which she won again in 2022. She also won the World Cup with Spain in 2023. She has done much to change attitudes to women's football in Spain, and Mollet del Vallès is proud of its most famous daughter.”

Sources: hola.com Wikipedia: Alexia Putellas