It is difficult, practically impossible, to find a season as glorious as the one signed by Aitana Bonmatí, completed this past Sunday with the World Cup. With Barça he won the Spanish Super Cup, the League and the Champions League and in Sydney he reached the zenith that only a select few reach, the icing on the cake desired by any footballer.
Her participation has been essential for the Blaugrana and with the red, chosen as the best player in both the highest European club competition and the World Cup tournament. “Winning the World Cup is a dream. I can not ask for anything more. On a sporting level, the season has been exceptional”, the 25-year-old midfielder explained visibly moved on the pitch at Stadium Australia.
Aitana closed her seventh season as a Barcelona player as the player with the most impact on the team, with 22 assists and 19 goals, her personal record against goal. In the absence of the injured Alexia Putellas, she was the offensive engine of the Catalans. She was also chosen MVP in five games in the last Champions League, in addition to being in the best eleven in the continental competition for the third consecutive year.
Far from ending the club season exhausted, he continued sweetly with the Spanish team. She scored three goals at the antipodes and was chosen the best of the match against Costa Rica and Zambia. But her importance in the tournament has gone beyond the statistics. Her quality and vision of the game in three quarters of the field has been essential in guiding Spain to the title in her third World Cup match, the second in which Aitana has participated.
"I am in shock. We have known how to enjoy and suffer. We already have the star. I am very proud, now to enjoy it”, indicated the midfielder, who removed the thorn in the lost final of the U-17 and U-20 World Cup in a big way.
The Catalan is no longer just a great footballer, now she has become an icon, a benchmark for future generations. It is the mirror in which the soccer players that will come will be able to look at. That reflex that was so hard for her to find when she took her first steps in the king of sports. “Who was going to tell me at the age of 14 when she played with children at Ribes, Cubelles and in the lower categories of Barça. I wanted to thank the people who have made their way before, we have all broken barriers ”, she recalled the difficult beginnings of her, a player who already has an enviable track record when she has not even reached the middle of her career. She has gone from being insulted on soccer fields during her childhood to touching the sky in Sydney.
After making its way through the precariousness of women's football, a lack of means still in force, praise has been common in the last years of its career, also from the men's category. “I think that the best legacy that we can leave for the future are the values that we formed at La Masia in its day. Seeing that Aitana has inherited this football DNA and the values of Barça makes me feel very proud, ”he wrote in the prologue to his autobiography Xavi Hernández, his childhood idol.
Before the semifinal, in the solitude of her room, Aitana acknowledged that she reviewed videos of Terrassa and Iniesta from the South African final. A few days later, he has emulated the mythical pair of blaugrana midfielders. “She is a player that I am completely in love with because of the way she plays. It's like the Iniesta of women's football", Pep Guardiola recently said of an Aitana who is on her way to achieving a milestone never reached by either Xavi or Fuentealbilla: lifting the Ballon d'Or. In the last edition she finished fifth, but this year is the top favorite to win the coveted award given by France Football, even more so after charging reasons in Australia and New Zealand.
