The women's Barça, a winning machine

There was a time, relatively far away, in 2006, when Barcelona for women was on the verge of disappearing.

There was another stage, closer, between 2015 and 2019, in which after winning the first four titles in its history, the Catalans choked on the League.

Now Barça has become a winning machine, owners of Spain, queens of Europe.

After 24 wins in the same number of league games, Jonathan Giráldez's girls once again won the Iberdrola League, the third in a row, the seventh in its history, after thrashing Real Madrid 5-0 this Sunday.

An overwhelming march to which we must add six wins in the Champions League group stage, another two wins to win the Spanish Super Cup and their ticket to the Copa del Rey quarterfinals.

Total,

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“And we must not forget”, warns Markel Zubizarreta, Barça's sports director, “that this team has just won everything last season”.

The azulgrana lifted the Cup, the League and the Champions League in the 2020-2021 campaign.

Still on the pitch at the Gothenburg stadium, when Barça had just become the first Spanish team to lift the Orejona, Zubizarreta seemed worried.

“I was happy, of course.

But victory is much more difficult to manage than defeat.

We have an advantage: this group of players lives by and for the continuous improvement system that we implement.

Tuesdays are better than Mondays.

They arrive wanting to eat everything in each training session”, explains the son of the Dream Team goalkeeper.

“Why is that happening?” Markel asks.

“They have suffered unstructured football and without resources in their formative stage.

Putellas, for example, had to leave Barça because two grassroots teams had closed.

And I'm talking about Alexia, not some trailblazer from the '70s. Now that they're in their prime and with the right resources, they can't afford not to do everything they can to be as successful as possible."

When Zubizarreta took charge of the Barça women's team in September 2015, he had a working group of five people and a budget of 1.5 million euros.

Today, Barça has about 4.5 million to invest and the

is made up of 20 people.

The club sells the shirt as one more asset - it has Stanley advertising and Spotify will be installed in both the women's and men's shirts - and they swept the individual awards galas.

Putellas won the Ballon d'Or and The Best.

In addition, Paños, Paredes and Hermoso won the award for best goalkeeper, defense and forward respectively.

“I come from a house of goalkeepers, when there was a goal it was a problem.

It is very difficult for me to explain that a collective sport has an individual award.

What Alexia does, neither Hansen nor Mapi can do.

Nor vice versa.

But what we want is that, if these prizes have to be given, they are for Barça players”, underlines the sports director.

Barça has become a magnet for the best soccer players in the world.

“We talked to them about football in a way that no one had ever talked to them before,” explains Zubi, who began to combine the functions of sports director, delegate (he organized the trips) and scout (he carried out the process of signing the players from start to finish). a player) to have two scouts who control the market, with main attention to what happens in European football.

Barça, in any case, finds itself with a problem.

"In the context of

women's football there are not many clubs that play what we play," says Markel.

The Barça work team divides the process to recruit a female footballer into two parts.

The first consists of analyzing her performance in the team she is on, but the second is more abstract.

"He is imaginative, we try to visualize, according to his characteristics, how he can fit in at Barça," says Markel.

The imagination of the sports management turned the Swedish Fridolina Rolfö, winger and center forward in her team and in Wolfsburg, on the left side.

A wide template that allows you to get around your Achilles heel: injuries.

Barça has eight players out and, in the season, 21 of the 24 players have passed through the infirmary.

“In team games, women's professional sport hasn't been established for a long time.

This means that there is less evidence on the reasons for the injuries, on the treatments to be followed, on how to recover, on how the rule affects all of this... If five years ago they had told me that we would train with this level of intensity, I would not I would have believed it.

We have to keep working, analyzing and developing this project”, says the sports director.

Zubizarreta has no other formula.

The Barça project above all else.

Neither famous footballers are signed, nor does it affect him when a coach leaves.

“Lluís [Cortés, coach who won the treble last year] left and nothing changed.

He would tell you that it would have been important if the work team had changed.

But it's the same group for four seasons.

When an important decision has to be made, such as the replacement of a coach, the great weight is in the sports project.

If that sports project is clear, everything else is easier”, concludes Zubizarreta.

Barcelona does not stop winning and he, surely, is still worried.

On his computer there is an Excel that says “Barça squad 2027-2028 ″.

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