Sandra is 16 years old and plays in the women’s cadet team of the Gandia soccer club, near the concentration point of the World Cup winners. Yesterday she put on the shirt of Alexia Putellas, the star of the national team, and she went to wait for her at the door of the Oliva hotel, in Valencia, where the players had been summoned. She has been trying for some time to give him a handwritten, personal and very emotional letter, in which she confesses her great admiration for him, instilled by a father who is no longer here. “She always told me that I would play for Barça, it’s my dream,” she said excitedly along with her mother, who accompanied her on an afternoon of long waiting marked by the trickle of vans in which the soccer players were arriving. Last night he managed to give it to her at the hotel and take a photo of her with it.
“Champions, we are with you! “Cheer up!”, shouted a group of fans upon the arrival of the Barcelona fans. They were the last to arrive, after nine at night, after their plane suffered a breakdown and incurred a long delay that extended the start of the meetings, first of the president of the CSD, Víctor Francos, with the coach, Montse Tomé. , and then, of the leader with the players. There were nerves outside and, presumably, inside the hotel. Tomé had even left the suitcase behind, as a taxi driver from Madrid brought it at night. He had his name embroidered next to the shield.
If with this concentration the Spanish Football Federation sought tranquility and distance itself from the focus, it half fulfilled its objective. The first is almost guaranteed by approaching this resort. Families on bicycles or walking, retired neighbors… The four-star Oliva Nova hotel is located in a quiet urbanization that in these weeks of September seems to have almost forgotten about summer. At the entrance there is a sports center, where training sessions are planned, in which center personnel unloaded material. The grass was also ready.
The media expectation could not be avoided, logically. Many curious onlookers approached the hotel, unmistakable with the RFEF bus parked in front and the dozens of journalists stationed since late in the afternoon. Some families were photographed, attracted by the hubbub, and the quickest to arrive even got a selfie with the soccer players from Madrid, the first to arrive. A family from Logroño passing through Dénia these days came running when they found out about the concentration, “but we are not big fans, the truth is that we are here out of curiosity,” they commented next to the fences that blocked the way. Two more girls came with their father hoping to see one of the girls, “they forced me to come as soon as they found out,” he said, resigned. Another couple, originally from Madrid but vacationing in Gandia, did the same, although they endured the wait until the clock forced them to run to watch the Atlético de Madrid match in the Champions League. They had not all arrived yet.