Irene Paredes: "When I was little I didn't even know there were teams of older girls"

“But where did you come from with those pints?

You look Swedish!”, Erika Vázquez, a historic Athletic player, blurted out the first day that Irene Paredes (Gipuzkoa, 30 years old) showed up to train in Lezama.

Her 178 centimeters height and her blonde hair gave her a nickname that still accompanies her: Swedish.

"Above all, in the veterans," jokes the Barcelona defense, which this Wednesday (6:45 p.m., Dazn) receives Real Madrid at the Camp Nou in the second leg of the Champions League quarterfinals (1-3 in the gone for the azulgrana).

In the preview of this new classic, Paredes appears before any other of her companions in the Sports City of Barcelona.

She has already walked her boxer dog after eight hours of sleep.

Now with interruptions, after last September she premiered as Mateo's mother along with his partner,

the field hockey player Lucía Ybarra.

“At the moment, he has two

.

But I hope he plays soccer,” Paredes smiles.

Ask.

10 seasons have passed since Erika Vázquez baptized her Swedish and 13 since she made her debut at Real Sociedad...

Answer.

It seems like more time has passed, right?

In the last 10 years everything has changed a lot.

I remember my time at Real as very nice despite the fact that football was not very developed and we were as professional as we could be, with the resources we had.

There are still a few like Alexia [Putellas], Jenni [Hermoso] and Marta [Torrejón], who have lived through this great transformation.

And, between us, we usually talk about it.

Lots of anecdotes, some I don't know if we could stand them.

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Q.

Like which ones?

R.

Like training at eight in the evening, after spending all day studying or working.

In the case of some players, both things, to finish at night in the Sports City.

P.

And if he tells all this to Claudia Pina [Barcelona youth squad, 20 years old, U-17 world champion and U-20 runner-up with Spain]?

R.

_

would laugh.

Alexia had to leave Barça because there were no teams and now she's Ballon d'Or. All this is super recent and it seems like I don't know... a thousand years have passed.

But everything we've experienced has been cool.

Q.

In what sense?

R.

_

You value things more.

And, luckily, at least we have experienced the transformation.

I have had many colleagues who left without experiencing this change.

We live the bad, but also the good.

Pina has only experienced the good.

Q.

Do you think about the money you stopped earning?

A.

No, I don't play football for money.

As a child, she did not imagine that she could be a soccer player.

She had no role models, she didn't even know there were older girls' teams.

And that, at that time, I am from Gipuzkoa, was the Añorga, who won Cups [he won three Copa de la Reina: 1990, 1991 and 1993].

But no one gave them a voice.

It wasn't in the newspapers or on TV.

She knew that in Germany there were women's teams, in the United States... but it was something very distant.

She enjoyed playing, but without the goal of being a professional.

Q.

Until you arrived at Paris Saint-Germain?

R.

The first change I experienced was when I went to Athletic.

Perhaps that was when everything became more serious.

It coincided with the moment in which football in Spain began to grow more and Athletic, as a pioneer, was always a little ahead.

Later, when I arrived in France, I found a very physical league.

In Spain, at that stage, the physical aspect was still not given much importance, the work was based on technical and tactical aspects.

And I found a super physical team.

You collided with a player like [Marie-Antoinette] Katoto and she killed you.

So I had to adapt.

If my rival was faster, I had to start earlier.

If he was stronger, he had to spend more hours in the gym.

Q.

Did you expect Barcelona to win the Champions League?

R.

I hoped that the year of Bilbao [2020] would win it.

For years she has coincided with many of the Barça players in the national team.

He talked to them a lot and knew how they were working.

And although many people might think that the Spanish league is very weak and Europe is not, and that may be true, I was sure that they were going to win it.

Q.

Why?

A.

Because of how you train and how you work at Barcelona.

But also because of the leap in quality they had made in the physical aspect.

Q.

Did it cost you the adaptation?

R.

It is similar to the selection, but here you work a lot.

And you have to adapt.

There are a lot of things I didn't do at PSG.

But when you understand what the coach is asking of you, it's a matter of time before the pieces fit together.

Q.

Did Real Madrid surprise you in the first leg?

R.

I was surprised that we blocked each other a bit when Madrid scored.

But it was a new situation for us.

It hadn't happened to us this season, much less against a team in the league.

But otherwise I wasn't surprised.

Madrid have very good players, many teammates, and with Alberto Toril they are doing very well.

The reference was not the last league game at Johan (5-0), they had a lot of casualties.

It gave them a lot of strength to play at home and then in the eighth minute they find a goal.

They can hurt us.

We have already seen it.

But without playing the best game of the year, we pulled it off.

P.

How do you imagine the Camp Nou?

R.

The Camp Nou imposes.

And that the times I've gone there weren't as many people as expected to go against Real Madrid.

But this match is much more than the fact of playing at the Camp Nou.

Q.

What do you mean?

R.

To everything that this game entails.

Tickets were sold out well in advance.

And no one is forced to buy a ticket.

They go because they want to see you and that's very nice.

It is an opportunity for people who cannot go to Johan to go to Camp Nou.

Above in a Champions League match.

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