With her left hand behind her back, Alexia Putellas, the captain of Barcelona Women, twirled her right hand in an extravagant gesture and bowed like a matador.
The Nou Camp — filled with 91,553 adulating fans, a world-record attendance for a women’s match — chanted her name as their queen celebrated Barcelona’s fourth goal on a historic night for her team and women’s football.
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An hour before kick-off, there was just a sprinkling of fans dotted around the iconic amphitheatre. Those dots became lines and lines became blocks as the drums banged and the “Barca!” chants rang out.
In the opening minutes, every Barcelona pass was met with applause and every tackle was cheered. Equally loud were the cicada-sounding whistles as soon as Real Madrid committed a foul.
When the crowd waited for free kicks, the thunderclap began, increasing in tempo. “Oohs” and “aahs” followed after any close chance.
Then Maria Leon’s left-footed 20-yard curling strike triggered a deafening wall of euphoria. Goosebumps.
Boos filled the stadium when referee Stephanie Frappart pointed to the penalty spot. So high-pitched were the whistles when Real Madrid’s Olga Carmona stepped up that some fans tried in vain to block them out by putting their fingers to their ears.
Culers, the world record for attendance at a women's football match is ours! pic.twitter.com/Hu94A9PXDO
— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) March 30, 2022
Penalty scored. Silence.
But only for a matter of seconds. Then the drums restarted and the applause echoed.
Claudia Zornoza’s 40-yard strike sailing over Barcelona goalkeeper Sandra Panos shocked the crowd but again, only momentarily. When nothing was given for a suspected foul in the box on Caroline Graham Hansen, the eventual player of the match, the screeching noise, like an army of angry crickets, lasted for minutes.
Then Barcelona turned the screw, showing that killer instinct, scoring three goals inside 10 minutes. Rebounding chants pinged back and forth from opposite stands as the Catalan club pulled clear.
Playing in front of fans at the men’s team’s ground for the first time, Barcelona Women have now made the Champions League semi-finals for the fourth consecutive year, beating rivals Real Madrid in El Clasico 8-3 on aggregate.
Putellas, the Ballon d’Or winner whose replica trophy sits in the club museum, struggled to sum up her emotions.
It should be 𝘜𝘚 bowing before 𝘏𝘌𝘙 ! pic.twitter.com/96QnLcjTQT
— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) March 30, 2022
“I’m almost speechless, honestly,” she said after the game.
“This has been utterly magical. When the match finished, the fans simply didn’t want to go home.
“There was such a connection between them and us while we celebrated. To hear them singing that they want to go to Turin (venue for the Champions League final in May) was superb.”
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This was not a one-off, this electrifying performance did not come out of the blue. You can’t sell 85,000 tickets in three days without a sustainable fanbase. When the women’s team used to play in the now-demolished Miniestadi, a stone’s throw from the Nou Camp in the city centre, the average attendance was between 500 and 1,000. Further out of the city at the Johan Cruyff Stadium, which was constructed for the women’s side in 2019, between 3,000 and 4,000 fans attend.
Barcelona have been building this project for 20 years. So how have they done it?
In January, Barcelona trounced Atletico Madrid 7-0 in the Super Cup, rounding off 2021 when they won every title possible — the Champions League, the league and the League Cup, named the Copa de la Reina.
It takes their tally up to a record seven league titles and eight Copa de la Reina trophies.
They have already been crowned 2022 league champions, clinching the title with six matches to spare. They have won all of their games so far, scoring 138 goals and conceding just seven. They have finished in the top two every season since 2011.
But it wasn’t always this way. Their success is a far cry from 21 years ago. The freshly-branded Spanish Superliga didn’t even accept Barcelona as members because of their poor results in the 2000-01 season. The women’s team were only incorporated into FC Barcelona as their own official sector a year later.
After three years in the top flight from 2004 to 2007, they were relegated, and there were concerns about the future of the women’s side. They returned to the top flight at the first time of asking in 2008 though, and won their first league title in 2012 to qualify for the Champions League the following season, albeit losing to Arsenal 7-0 on aggregate in the first round (There was no group phase back then).
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The club went professional in the summer of 2015 — a turning point according to sporting director Markel Zubizarreta, who joined that year.
“There was a mindset change seven years ago,” says Zubizarreta. “The club was not building a women’s football project but a professional football project in women’s football. To invest in the same way, to build the same project.
“It’s really simple to say but to change the mentality in all the club’s departments, that was the work.”
From 2015 to 2022, Barcelona have transformed the structure of their women’s teams. The number of first-team staff has grown to include roles such as an additional assistant manager, a goalkeepers coach, an analyst, a team delegate, a kit manager, doctors, psychologists and nutritionists.
The academy was also revamped to allocate two coaches per youth team from the under-10s up to the B team, as well as physios, doctors, psychologists, physical trainers and methodologists.
The women’s section also has a dedicated regional and international scouting department as well as a sports science team.
The football management, scouting, playing methodology, sports science and academy departments replicate the men’s model, with the same facilities.
In 2015, Barcelona did not want to invest a lot of money in the world’s best signings. Instead, their philosophy was to invest in their first-team and academy players.
They believe the future lies in the success of their academy and are giving opportunities to the players it produces.
Wednesday night’s squad featured 10 players who have come through the Barcelona academy system, and eight of the starting XI have joined the first team since 2017. Four Barcelona B players made the step up to the first-team squad, with at least five regularly training with the seniors.
It was apt that on such a historic night, it was Barcelona academy products Aitana Bonmati and Claudia Pina turned the tide. At 2-1 down, Bonmati finished her darting run with an arrowed shot that nestled into the bottom corner, and this was shortly followed by Pina’s delightful chip.
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For the last four years, Barcelona’s under-10, under-12 and under-14 girls’ teams have played in boys’ leagues — the only club in Spain to do this. Even their nominally under-18s girls’ team consists solely of under-16s, the theory being if they play in tough conditions now, they will benefit in the future.
The focus is not on winning, but on understanding the Barcelona style and training at a high level — three to four sessions per week, increasing to five or six as players get older.
But that does not mean winning is not a part of the academy. The girls’ team has won the boys’ league and their under-14s side is on course to top the table again this season.
“The academy players have a lot of talent — maybe more talent than the first-team players, because they have played in a professional academy since they were 11,” explains Zubizarreta.
By comparison Putellas, the FIFA women’s player of the year, didn’t start playing professionally until she was 21 years old.
The academy is Barcelona’s future and is why, next season, they are looking to expand the number of girls’ academy teams from five to seven.
“It’s not that we are doing badly, it’s because the level of the first team is so high that we need to do things even better in the academy,” says Zubizarreta.
“We are really proud of this. It’s different and we need to keep this difference because everyone is investing in women’s football. If we stop, the clubs behind us may reach our level.”
Barcelona’s serious investment in the women’s side was shown when, for the first time since its founding in 1979, La Masia — the club’s iconic youth academy, which has produced players such as Lionel Messi, Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Pep Guardiola — welcomed female residents last August.
The nine academy teenagers who play for the Barcelona B team, eight from the surrounding Catalonia region and one from the nearby island of Mallorca, combine their training with their studies. They are the only female athletes living on-site, with their bedroom view looking across to the Johan Cruyff Stadium, the regular home of the women’s first team.
The building houses 106 athletes from Barcelona’s football, basketball, handball, futsal and roller hockey teams. They are educated in classrooms on the ground floor — the auditorium hosts seminars on what the club calls “invisible training”, broaching topics from diet to social media.
Club nutritionists advise the kitchen on the meals offered in the dining room and players’ food intake can be tracked every week.
The athletes can relax with table football tables, ping-pong and basketball hoops scattered around the social area as well as a large screen TV on which they often watch football, tennis or Formula One.
There is a deep-rooted, relentless desire to improve among the women’s team and that stems from the challenges they have faced.
From 2015 to 2019, Barcelona could only finish as runners-up in the league. They were losing.
“To keep that investment, to keep that focus on our players at that moment was a huge step,” says Zubizarreta.
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In 2019, Barcelona reached their first Champions League final but suffered a chastening 4-1 defeat against Lyon, who were then — and some would argue still are — the dominating force of European women’s football.
The team realised they had to improve their fitness and physical strength and Zubizarreta is happy with the progress they’ve made in the past three years.
“We have the best version in terms of the physicality of all our players,” he says. “The players who have experienced this progression are conscious that they need to make the most of their time here.
“When I see the players coming every morning to the training centre, they are still hungry.”
Ingrid Engen, who joined from leading German club Wolfsburg last summer, says the relentlessness is what struck her most when she moved to the Catalan club.
“In every single training, you’re always at your highest level, no one is happy if it has been a bad training,” Engen says. “Everything goes faster. It’s a very, very, very professional group.
“We are not happy if we do things at 80 per cent. No matter the opponent, we are not happy if we are leading 3-0 at the break — we always want more.
“I came here because I wanted to improve and I was super-fascinated by the way of playing here.
“Every single day, I’m getting better. I’m learning from my team-mates. I’ve never been in a team that has this type of winning mentality, and also this confidence.”
Fridolina Rolfo, an experienced Sweden international who also joined from Wolfsburg and previously played for Bayern Munich, has been impressed by the finer details.
91,553 fans 🙏 a historic moment for @fcbfemeni and for the women’s game ❤️ pic.twitter.com/TkBT68QkiB
— Fridolina Rolfö (@FridolinaRolfo) March 30, 2022
“I knew the technical part, they were really good and skilful but I have to say the tactical part is better than what I expected,” she says. “The quality was even better than I thought.
“The best part about being with Barcelona is winning. The feeling that you do not want to lose because you are so used to winning. It’s the best team I’ve played with.”
When asked if Barcelona could replicate Lyon’s decade of dominance, Rolfo says: “It’s possible. If you see the quality of the team and what the club is doing. But we have to be humble, because if you look around, you see the European clubs, they are at a really high level.”
Characterised by short passes and movement, the Barcelona style is unique to the club and encompasses every team, whether male or female. The methodology is the same for both, and some of the men’s coaches have joined the women’s side.
“When I talk with players signing for Barca academy and the first team, I talk about football in a way that is completely different to what they have heard,” says Zubizarreta.
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“We’re talking about understanding, not doing. The language is about possession, not attacking or defending, but positioning, timing and space.
“The game is the same. If there’s a Barca fan that puts on the TV and they cannot recognise if they’re women or men, they’ll say, ‘That’s a Barca team’. That is important.”
Naturally, tweaks are necessary but the focus is on the project. Former head coach Lluis Cortes left last summer and, within three days, they had appointed then-29-year-old assistant coach Jonatan Giraldez despite receiving CVs from 100 coaches around the world. Having spent two and a half years at the club already, Giraldez understood the Barcelona DNA.
Of course, performances are not perfect and the club are constantly reviewing but not making dramatic changes. There is no knee-jerk reaction. Their core method remains, with the focus on playing the game their way.
“We think it is the correct way, it is not under discussion,” says Zubizarreta.
“Right now, it’s easy, because we are winning more than losing. But four years ago, we were losing. We had (Patri) Guijarro, Bonmati and Putellas (all starters last night) in the team.
“So at that moment, OK, we need to invest more in them. Now they play our style and are the best midfielders we can find.”
Part of Barcelona’s style is the need to adapt to different situations quickly and an in-depth understanding of the tactics.
When Arsenal hosted Barcelona at the Emirates in December, two hours before kick-off, Guijarro tested positive for COVID-19 so the match plan had to change. Putellas switched to a holding midfield role, a position she rarely plays, and yet the team didn’t look out of sync at all, thumping the Women’s Super League side 8-1 over two group-stage games.
How the roles have reversed from that 7-0 aggregate loss to Arsenal in the same competition 10 years ago.
Barcelona don’t just win, they win in style, and the quality of their football has caught the eye of male players past and present.
Academy boys who, previously, would bypass the women training without batting an eyelid, now wait 20 minutes for a photo with them. Barcelona legend Carles Puyol, who spoke to the players on Monday and watched the resounding 5-2 win alongside men’s first-team manager Xavi, has been a huge advocate for the women’s team, posting support from his Instagram account, with a casual 11.1 million followers.
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“We are not a product of women’s football, we are a product of football,” says Zubizarreta.
That entices a larger fanbase. Head coach Giraldez ran out of tickets for Wednesday night so quickly he had to turn down some of his friends’ requests. His grandparents made the 1,000km trip from Galicia in northern Spain to support him and the team.
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It is not just fans of the men’s team turning up but also supporters who enjoy watching good football. There is no denying they have seized an opportunity to get behind a successful team, especially with the Barcelona men’s team’s recent struggles.
Granddaughters and grandsons took their long-supporting grandparents to this week’s historic game, while parents wanted their sons and daughters to witness the momentous occasion.
Supporters from as far as Mexico and South Korea flooded through the stadium gates, waving flags and flares, chanting as the Barcelona team bus arrived.
It’s the stuff supporters of the women’s game have always dreamed of.
Barcelona have put down their mark in women’s football history — a page has been turned.
Fiorella D’Angelo, a 26-year-old Catalonian, has supported the team since that first Champions League final in 2019 and goes to every game at the Johan Cruyff Stadium.
“I felt let down by the men’s team,” she says.
“I saw a poster of Alexia in the city and I started watching the women’s team.
“All my friends set up a Whatsapp group to organise buying tickets. On the day they were released, we were so nervous we wouldn’t get them.”
Tickets started at €9 (£7.60) and around 30,000 of Barcelona’s socios — club members — signed up during the first 24-hour window of exclusive access. They were able to purchase up to four tickets. The Nou Camp was sold out within three days, setting up the possibility of a world-record attendance.
The anticipation began to build in the lead-up to the game. All eyes were on Barcelona. However, local journalists were shocked when a Barcelona player, Giovana Queiroz, who is on loan at Levante, released a timely letter to club president Joan Laporta on Tuesday, claiming she had been subjected to “abusive behaviour” at the Catalan club.
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When asked to comment on Queiroz’s statement, Barcelona said: “The allegations of moral abuse, workplace harassment and psychological violence are not true. Giovana was a close contact of a positive COVID-19 case and the club told her she couldn’t travel to Orlando in the United States with the Brazilian national team due to Spanish government regulations.
“The player complained to the club’s compliance department and to FIFA. FC Barcelona’s compliance department and FIFA found that they had both acted properly. The case was closed.”
Fans held up yellow cards to spell out the words “More Than Empowerment” — a motto based on the traditional wording of Barcelona’s “mes que un club” (more than a club) slogan — but this wasn’t just a token gesture.
Quite the opposite, thought midfielder Graham Hansen.
“Absolutely you can make money out of it,” she said. “It’s not just 91,000; it’s 91,000 people having a party. And if you’re having fun, you want to do it again. So, this is a game-changer.”
Before the game, Putellas said she never visualised herself on the pitch but last night has changed that for future generations of girls.
“I couldn’t picture myself at Nou Camp when I was a girl, because I could only see men. I knew I could play but I never imagined I would play here,” she said.
“It’s a starting point. We can open so many doors for so many girls. I feel very proud that Barca makes it possible.
“It will be a turning point in women’s football in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain and hopefully all around the world, because Barca is an international team. We will broadcast an important message.”
(Top photo: Getty Images)
