🇪🇸 Euro 2022 Player to Watch: Alexia Putellas | OneFootball

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Jorge Vilda’s Spain side go into Euro 2022 as favourites, thanks in part to the huge success of Barcelona’s women. But can they live up to the hype?

The squad is stacked with talent from both Barça and Real Madrid, as you might expect, and there is one player in particular that stands out. One who has been described as the best in the world.

Midfielder Alexia Putellas cleaned up in terms of individual awards at the end of 2021, taking the Best Fifa Women’s Player of the Year crown as well as the Ballon d’Or and the Uefa Women’s Champions League Player of the season for 2021/22.

“Since I was a little girl, I haven’t let go of the ball,” she told the BBC.

You can tell.

Described as a midfielder but more like a number 10, the left-footed Putellas can pass, dribble and shoot with supreme vision, intelligence and technical ability. And that’s not to mention the free-kicks.

The 2021/22 season saw her score 29 goals in 36 league and Champions League appearances, even better than the 20 she netted in 40 games in the same two competitions as Barça won the treble the season before.

Putellas is on the verge of making it to 100 Spain caps (she has 99 to date) and is already the most capped player in the team’s history at 28. The versatile Putellas can do it all and she is in her prime.

“Football has no gender,” she wrote in the Player’s Tribune.

“As a kid in Mollet, I was the only girl playing with the boys in the square or at the park, but there was never any problem. I never got told I couldn’t play, there were no insults.

“The new generation needs to normalise this. Football belongs to everyone.”

That ‘new generation’ is bound to be watching her every move this summer, as Alexia Patellas looks set to become one of the big stars of Euro 2022.

Can she fire Spain to the trophy?