Ambitious, self-demanding, competitive, leader… These are the first adjectives that come to mind when talking about Aitana Bonmatí i Conca (Sant Pere de Ribes, 1998), but the great favorite to win the Ballon d’Or tomorrow in Paris is very much more than that. She is also that shy girl who didn’t believe that a club like FC Barcelona had seen something special in her. “Is it really for me?” She innocently asked Luri Sorroche, her coach during her time at Cubelles, when they told her that a fax had arrived from Barça to give her a test. Outside of the green there is also another Aitana Bonmatí, the one who is an example of social commitment, whether through entities such as UNHCR or the Cruyff Foundation, or leading changes in the Spanish Federation.
La Vanguardia has spoken with some of the coaches who have seen her grow as a footballer and personally. Witnesses who have witnessed in the front row the transformation of a girl who did not play with other girls until she was 13, who spent her first two seasons in the Barça first team with hardly any minutes but who with patience and a lot of work has managed to become one of the best soccer players in the world. In January she will turn 26 and her achievements are already frightening. This year she has won the Champions League and the World Cup, being the MVP of both tournaments, something within the reach of very few. UEFA named her best player of the year and the only thing missing from her showcases is the Ballon d’Or with which to put the icing on the cake of an adventure that began two decades ago in Sant Pere de Ribes.
At the age of seven he changed basketball for football, a passion he had discovered in the schoolyard, and landed at CD Ribes. With a shirt four sizes too big, hanging down to his knees and his cuffs rolled up, he took his first steps with the ball. She soon began to earn everyone’s praise: “Where did this girl come from?” They asked Óscar Gámez, the first coach Aitana had at CD Ribes.
“It attracted a lot of attention. Everyone who watched the game was amazed by that little girl and her desire,” she remembers. She was the only girl on the team but she immediately made it clear that she was not going to let herself be stepped on: “she had a super strong character, she didn’t give in to anyone.” A characteristic that would make her her trademark. “She had an impressive role as team leader and at a football level she made a difference,” remembers Luri Sorroche, with whom Aitana coincided in her next club, CF Cubelles. “She is capable of putting everything in her backpack and moving forward with any situation,” says Sorroche, who believes that “this self-demand that she still has today is what has helped her grow so much.”
It was she who received the call from FC Barcelona. In reality it was a fax, “as was usually done before,” summoning her to take the entrance tests and although Aitana hesitated, Sorroche gave her the push she needed: “She has never been believed and she did not have full confidence that they would catch her. I told her that if she didn’t go, I would take her myself.” And she came in, of course she came in. She was 13 years old and she rose through all the categories of the club until her opportunity came and she made the jump to the first team in 2016, led by Xavi Llorens.
They were the most difficult years of his career, in which he had to learn to manage his immense self-demand with the few minutes he had. “During those years we talked a lot,” Sorroche remembers. “It frustrated him not to play and I told him that he should be patient, that he would play when it was his turn.”
With the arrival of Lluís Cortés to the Blaugrana bench, the midfielder gained prominence. It has been more than a decade since their paths crossed for the first time in the lower categories of the Catalan national team and he knows Aitana more closely: “She was a very shy player and that made her protect herself a lot,” explains Cortés, who remembers her “ in his corner, almost without speaking.” Something that changed as he felt more important on the field: “This has helped him open up outside as well. He has matured a lot.”
A shyness that contrasted with his enormous character on the field. “She is a player with spark in every sense, very impulsive, passionate, and she took all of that to the maximum,” says Cortés. So much so that he was even on the verge of expelling her from training the week before Barça’s first Champions League final. It was thought that she would not be a starter when she saw the distribution of the bibs in an exercise: “It was a day to kick her out, and she knows it,” she remembers. But Aitana has known how to polish her electric character: “she had to change certain things if she wanted to be successful and she did. She has worked hard not only on the field, but also outside. She has been very well advised by her people and she has known how to listen. The Aitana of today is different from the one from a few years ago.”
The three technicians share the feeling of pride of those who have been part of this path to the top. Sorroche confesses when she first thought about an Aitana Ballon d’Or: “When Alexia won it,” she responds with determination. “If they were already looking towards Spanish football, not so much American or Brazilian football, I knew they would realize its potential.”
Cortés, for his part, believes that “we are still not aware” of what it means for the Ballon d’Or to stay at home for the third consecutive year. “We are living in a historic time. “We have normalized the exceptional.”
