One step from immortality is where Barcelona Femeni’s season finally ended on that fateful night in Turin. It was a monumental, record-breaking night for the women’s game between two sides steeped in history – Olympique Lyonnais Feminin (OL), France’s most successful women’s football side; and Barcelona Femeni, a side looking to emulate their French counterparts in building a dynasty.
In the end, OL laid down the law and wrapped up a record-extending eighth UEFA Women’s Champions League title, leaving Barcelona, last year’s most dominant side in world football, with familiar scars from an extraordinary season.
While the scars of defeat run deep, for Barcelona’s Spanish contingent, the 2022 UEFA Women’s European Championship is a shot at redemption. Tapped as one of the favourites for the tournament, Spain’s Barcelona core will have had a summer’s worth of R&R to put the UWCL defeat behind them. That rest, though, will do little for Jennifer Hermoso’s chances.
Hermoso, the national team’s leading goalscorer, has been ruled out of the competition with a knee injury. She scored 51 goals in 2021, the most of any female footballer in the world. Her goals will be sorely missed, and while her veteran leadership will also be a loss, La Roja have an outsized, tattooed presence to fill that void in Maria Pilar Leon.
Leon, an ever-present in the Barcelona setup, appears to drink from the well of composure every time she’s on the pitch. Operating as a left-sided centre-back in a back four, Leon’s ice-cool demeanour has a ripple effect on a Barcelona backline that tends to play a high line.
It is that front-foot football that sets the tone for Spain. La Roja have a (frankly luxurious) number of technically brilliant players, but it always helps when your centre-back can dictate play. It’s not all grace and composure, though. The sangfroid that characterises Leon is smoked to the nub sometimes, and that’s when her taurine bellicosity takes centre stage, nipping the opposition’s half-chances in the bud.
In a tournament where teams have a growing number of footballers showcasing their mettle on the grandest stage of them all, the game usually comes down to short windows of opportunity, left just ajar to offer a glimpse of hope, yet one that teams generally slam shut when they get you to commit.
‘The Intangibles’ sounds like a cheap remake of Pixar’s ‘The Incredibles,’ but in the latter stages of the 2022 Women’s Euros, when the gap in quality is less likely to be a decisive factor, intangibles like composure, experience and leadership will likely become the calling card for the eventual winners.
Luckily for La Roja, Leon has been there and done that. A sea of tranquillity amid 22 shifting, shuffling bodies on the pitch, Maria Pilar Leon is ready to play a starring role in Spain’s production of ‘The Intangibles’.
Disney, are you reading?
Written by Colin D’Cunha
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