'One day we'll realise what we achieved'

Arsenal's Mariona Caldentey on fighting to win support for women's football, and the stress of World Cup triumph

- Sid Lowe

When Mariona Caldentey was a student, reading sports science at university, she could see the Camp Nou scoreboard from her bedroom window on the top floor of 63 Travessera de les Corts. On the nights when she and her flatmates didn't stroll across to the stadium, they would hear goals before they saw them on TV. They played too, becoming league champions, but never imagined themselves over there. "Our reality was Astroturf pitches with no stands," she recalls. Yet in April 2022, eight years on, 91,648 people came to watch them, breaking Barcelona's own world record set a fortnight before. "It all happened so quick; one day we'll realise what we achieved, all we did for change to come," she says.

The building has gone, demolished with the construction work at the stadium, but someone should put a blue plaque where it stood. When Caldentey arrived from Felanitx, Mallorca, just turned 18, she shared the sobreático with Virginia Torrecilla and Alexia Putellas. Patri Guijarro, Laia Codina and Aitana Bonmatí came too. Together, over a decade, they built perhaps the best team in history, quadruple winners last season. Caldentey departed for Arsenal last summer after 10 seasons, a World Cup winner and Ballon d'Or candidate, with nothing left to win.