Alexia Putellas and the triumph of effort

From glory to hell.

From winning and being the first Spanish footballer to lift the Ballon d'Or to entering the operating room for a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee.

All in the same season.

“Now you can find another player to win the Champions League.

I have broken ”, Alexia Putellas (Mollet del Vallès, Barcelona, ​​28 years old) messaged his coach Jonatan Giráldez the same day he was injured.

With a camera following her day to day, Amazon Prime and the Barça midfielder have released the documentary

.

In its three chapters you can see the professional and personal career of the player, from the world record crowd at the Camp Nou against Real Madrid (91,553 spectators attended the match) to the achievement of her second Ballon d'Or in a row (2021 and 2022).

Alexia and soccer.

"She is a soccer geek," says Mapi León, a teammate at Barça.

Alexia and the ball have always been friends.

Since she was very little, she has not been separated from him.

"The first memory I have with soccer is being with the ball all the time," Putellas confesses in her documentary.

Whether it was at recess, in some free time at dinner, in the goals of the pavilion where they did physical education or in the streets of Mollet del Vallès, Alexia was always kicking the leather.

Football became her armor after the death of her father, her benchmark, the one who took her to train and play and with whom she went to the Camp Nou to see her favorite player, Ronaldinho, and with whom when she arrived at house commented on all the plays.

"I hope you are very proud of your daughter wherever you are," she concluded in her speech when she collected her first Ballon d'Or.

there are those who trust in faith and then there is @alexiaputellas, who knows that everything depends on his work.

#AlexiaLaborOmniaVincit now available pic.twitter.com/HvP87dQKNw

– Prime Video Spain (@PrimeVideoES) December 2, 2022

The media figure.

She is the best soccer player in the world.

On and off the field.

In this last season, she has won individual prizes of high prestige.

In addition to the Ballon d'Or, she achieved The Best.

The first time she won the golden ball, she went from adding 400,000 followers on her Instagram account to over a million.

"The Ballon d'Or has changed everything," Alexia confesses in his documentary.

"I'm having a life that I didn't have before."

Media growth has been added to his sporting achievements: photo sessions, interviews or collaborations with brands.

“The sponsorship barrier that he has broken is historic.

There are no precedents and nothing that resembles it ”, confesses his representative Josep María Figueras.

The media impact has been so great that Figueras points out that "two Alexias are needed to achieve everything".

But Putellas tries to select the collaborations.

"My way of acting off the field is to make sure who I provide my sports services to and that they believe that women's football is real," says the player.

The fight against change.

Alexia has one goal: that soccer is not labeled as female, but rather that it be global.

"There is no women's soccer, everything is soccer," she says.

Putellas is one of the most visible faces in the demand for the rights of soccer players: “We owe it to ourselves, men and women.

We owe it to ourselves because there are things that have been very unfair for years”, defends the midfielder.

Barça is one of the clubs that has bet the most on its women's section, which in its opinion has not happened with the Spanish team: “The other teams are betting on their players.

There are players who travel by plane, but we don't and we make longer journeys.

Either you improve it or it will take its toll on you”, Alexia emphasizes.

The Turin final.

In the documentary, Putellas recalls the shock of the Champions League final in Turin, a hard blow for her.

"We can not fail.

When we saw that the rival was Lyon, we knew that victory meant closing the cycle: we lost the first final against them (2018-2019)”, Alexia reflected a few hours before traveling to the Italian city.

But it was not like that.

In just half an hour, the Catalans saw how the French were superior to them and closed the final in the blink of an eye.

"I felt that I had failed a lot of people," the player confesses months later.

Her defeat hurt her a lot and she admits in the documentary that she was surprised by the positive attitude of the fans who went to the Turin stadium: “We lost the final and they kept saying they would come to the stadium again.

They are the best".

the world needed a documentary about @alexiaputellas#AlexiaLaborOmniaVincit pic.twitter.com/JVNqh07GHi

– Prime Video Spain (@PrimeVideoES) December 26, 2022

The abyss.

After the lost Champions League final, Alexia was going to play the Euro Cup in England.

Everything went wrong.

"I have broken down and I have to quit soccer," the player wrote to her mother.

The world fell on top of her, everything went black.

A bad gesture after a goal play in a training session one day before the start of the Euro in July.

She right away she knew what she had.

Frightened by the future and devastated by her injury, Putellas confessed with fear on her knee: “I was afraid.

An Alexia entered with one knee and left with another.

I felt nostalgic letting go of that version.”

The heads and tails of the coin.

“One day you are at the top and the other you are at the bottom,” she assured.

Traumatized, she came to admit that she had done everything possible: "I enjoyed it and if I can't play again, I'm at peace."

With a recovery process and with more strength than she ever reflected: “Do you remember when I told you that if I didn't come back I would be at peace?

No way!"

Behind the cameras.

“When Alexia was injured, we had a moment of crisis and rapid reflection to put everything back together,” confesses Luis Calvo, You First content director.

The production team had not foreseen that ending, they wanted to end the Euro Cup in style, but the injury changed their plans.

After breaking up, at You First they knew that they had to be by her side to support her and try to build her life with the new circumstances.

An unexpected script change.

"Making a documentary was not among Alexia's priorities," says Calvo.

It can already be seen over the course of the three episodes: Putellas only has one focus and that is soccer.

But there was one thing that made her fully engage with the project: "When she entered the audiovisual platforms and saw that there was almost no women's soccer, she realized that it was worth it."

Being an elite player means having a busy schedule, but if your name is Alexia Putellas and you are the benchmark in women's football, the available slots are few.

Actions with brands, press conferences, matches or interviews.

“We made a tailor-made production.

Sometimes we had an hour to be able to record with her or at other times we had to cancel and schedule another date”, Calvo points out.

To make the three-episode documentary there were around 60 days of recording.

Alexia was from day one supervising everything that was shot.

Her involvement was constant and she watched each episode when she had just assembled: "Her reaction to her has been very good."

As stated in the documentary,

, for the player "work conquers everything", a life motto that she has tattooed.

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