How Barcelona went from great to unstoppable
Ahead of a fourth Champions League final in five years, those involved give an inside view on how Barcelona took the next step towards European domination
When Barcelona director Maria Teixidor took responsibility for the club’s women’s team in 2017, the Catalan giants had just finished second in Spain’s top division for a second year running, to Atlético Madrid by three points, having missed out to Athletic Club by a sole point a season earlier.
Barcelona was a great club, and before their spell of runners up spots they had won four league titles in a row, but there was still work to be done on and off the field to make the women’s team more professional, and certainly to challenge in Europe’s premier competition – the UEFA Champions League.
“When I came in, one of the points of our bid was to professionalise women’s football and once we won the elections that was a project that launched,” says Teixidor, who remained in the role until 2020 before founding her own law company.
“We hired Markel [Zubizarreta] who has been the Director of Football for the women’s team and the whole division. We started to work on the different things players needed to become professional, not just on the sport side, but overall professionalism and what you get in return. Better training, better organisation, more staff, but the context of having a good team that is professional.
“Getting the members of the club themselves to know we are doing this, getting them to the matches. The press, who didn’t pay attention to the women at the time who we needed at our side, inviting them to games, giving them interviews.”
The original Barcelona team was created in 1970 but did not become an official part of the club until 2002, just over two decades ago, incredibly while they were a second division team.
“One of the first things was to meet the players and realise how it had been for them to follow their dreams…”
Hard to imagine given they are about to take part in their fourth successive Champions League final, but they were relegated back to the second division in 2007. Returning at the first time of asking, they soon set about becoming Spain’s top side and by 2012 had their first title, the first of four in a row.
In 2015, when Teixidor first joined the club as a board member, Barcelona made a decision to professionalise the women’s set up in pursuit of European glory, and Teixidor recalls how she set about working out what the players needed to go a step further, as well as reclaiming their domestic crown.
“One of the first things was to meet the players and realise how it had been for them to follow their dreams,” she says. “We had to be aware of the differences of what we gave to the men and to the women and how this needed to change. Slowly, but with a conviction, we did what we needed to do to provide the girls with the same.
“Learning about how difficult it was for them to study and train just to make a living. About 90% of our players had university degrees or were studying, which was a big difference for us because they knew they needed to have an alternative to their football career.”
One area which needed work was bringing the squad up to the required fitness levels, with Teixidor crediting former club doctor, Eva Ferrer, for her role in helping to professionalise the set up behind the scenes.
Due to still being employed now with the Barcelona Innovation Hub as Head of Health and Sports Specialist, Ferrer can only give a general view on what has changed over the years since becoming the club doctor in 2018.
“We are more professional; all female football is more professional now,” she says. “The demands and performance has to be more professional and it means we have had to work for professional athletes to get that performance level higher.
“Each individual is different; their performance is different and it depends on what a club can give a player or what they can’t. It’s not only about economics, how many staff do you have? What experts do you have? The specialists you have so they can take each and every player individually based on their own needs.”
Teixidor meanwhile was focusing on off-field matters as Zubizarreta set about improving the squad on the playing field alongside new head coach Fran Sánchez, who had replaced long-standing head coach Xavi Llorens the same summer Teixidor took over the running of the women’s set up.
The club swooped to bring in international talent such as Élise Bussaglia, Toni Duggan, Nataša Andonova, Fabiana and Lieke Martens, as well as Spanish defender Mapi León from rivals Atlético.
Off it, Teixidor was working to bring on board brands and partners to raise more commercial revenue which could be reinvested into the women’s side of the club, but admits even six years ago it was a challenge to get brands on board in women’s football.
“It was not easy,” she says, bluntly. “Brands tended to focus on the men’s team and if not then the basketball team. They told me several times when I looked for sponsors that women’s football doesn’t bring revenues, so if we bring money it will not make a difference.
“Stanley for example were our first shirt sponsor and already a club sponsor, they decided to focus on a different part of the club and make a difference to how they got involved and that was a big success. They were brave enough to make a change and that opened the way for other brands. The amounts they gave us was not huge in comparison to the men, it was peanuts, it was hard to get fair deals but for me bring brands in was the most important thing so people saw an opportunity.”
By 2020, Teixidor signed a partnership with Catalan street clothing brand Naulover for two-and-a-half years.
“They had the same story as the club. An international brand from Barcelona, family-owned, they liked the story and they accompanied us in this first step and it was key to show other brands there was an opportunity there.”
Teixidor says she didn’t involve herself in the sport side, leaving the recruitment and personnel to Zubizarreta, but admits “we were very clear on developing our own talent.”
In 2017, the club had plenty of young Spanish talent in the squad, many who would go on to become household names such as Mariona Caldentey, Patri Guijarro and future Ballon d’Or winner Alexia Putellas, as well as a teenage Aitana Bonmatí breaking into the first team squad.
“I had those discussions with Markel on who we would sign, making wishes with what we had in the budget, but I would help with things like the first team didn’t have a women’s doctor on the staff. I thought we were entering a new phase and a new world for the medical department. The Barcelona department is great, but it had no women in it so I pushed for a woman to join and a specific role to look at the health of our women players as I think that makes a difference and to help develop the training.
“One thing we introduced is a close look to what periods mean for sports women and how different training is. We introduced an application to track our players and adapt training for each player in different moments.”
That woman was Ferrer, at the end of Teixidor’s first season as the Head of Barcelona’s women’s department, who set about making changes behind the scenes and admits still to this day the effect of the menstrual cycle is still one of the “hot topics” when it comes to setting individual and group training plans for players.
“It’s not just about how hormones affect the muscles or the ligaments, it affects a broad amount of risks related to various injuries,” says Ferrer. “Understanding what’s going on in the menstrual cycle is the basics. We have very little information about that, but what we know now is not enough, it’s a starting point and then replicate it in their daily performance, and that’s not easy.
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“It means when you invest you have to decide where you invest. Related to biomechanics and the loads, if you don’t know how to cope with the loads of the training, the special areas a female needs not only in football. We run differently, that’s a fact. Any sport related to running, females will have their own needs.
“It’s not only in the medical area but in everything. How you practice, what you need. It’s not that it’s better or worse, we are different, you are different to me. We have different individual needs and that has to be taken into account. You have to also have that in mind in academies. We’re talking about elite and professionals, but it has to start when they are kids. If you don’t have that female approach, it’s difficult to get on that pathway once they’ve grown up. When the girls are small, they need to have those individual plans related to their gender which will help them when they grow up. Education from the academy is basic.”
Ferrer and Teixidor put an emphasis on expanding that philosophy to the club’s famed La Masia, which continues to produce talented players across both the men’s and women’s side.
Teixidor goes on to explain that another key area she looked at was get the women’s team to start playing games at the club’s famous Camp Nou, but Sánchez was initially against the idea for a fear results wouldn’t match the expectation at the time.
“They were players who were used to going out and nobody would recognise them…”
Offering more exposure to the players and putting them out in the media was another key area of her philosophy as the team moved into the 2018-19 season and added more international talent such as current striker Asisat Oshoala.
“The teams that had opened their doors to main stadiums had lost games, so we had to balance what was good for the team from the sports side and we had a very regular and close conversation around all aspects of what could affect the women’s team,” says Teixidor.
On pushing their players off the pitch, she adds “Another point for example I had very clear was to turn our players into role models and make them famous. Do interviews and player appearances. Let the world know who Alexia was, who Oshoala was, whoever. This had some psychological effects on how they saw themselves. They were players who were used to going out and nobody would recognise them.
“It’s comfortable to be in this position, but then your whole life changes when you become a public figure and some players had a tough time with that outside of the training and games. We had to approach it very carefully, taking into account who were the players most ready to make this step forward into the public light and those to be kept safe and not so much in the public. Everything we did was to allow proper growth, but keep players safe too.”
Barcelona came second in the league once again, but to the surprise of even Teixidor herself, reached a first Champions League final in Budapest where they would face the all-conquering Lyon side.
Sánchez had departed halfway through the season and was replaced by assistant coach Lluís Cortés, who he had initially brought in as an analyst the season before, at the same as Teixidor’s arrival.
“I knew Fran from before Barcelona and when he rang me I thought it was a meeting to speak about some of the young players, because I coached the Catalonia team, and to see if I could help him decide if they were good enough for Barcelona,” says Cortés, now the Ukraine head coach.
“He said ‘I need an analyst for my staff’. He was from men’s football and wanted someone in the women’s game to help him. I had been doing some TV work and he said he had listened to me and liked what I said, so I accepted, left the association and went full-time with Barcelona for the 2017-18 season.”
After a year as an analyst, Sánchez brought Cortés onto his coaching staff at the start of the 2018-19 season and when he left, Zubizarreta requested that he took over for the second half of the season.
“I said ‘Ok, but I want to speak to Fran’. I called him and told him they’d offered me the job. I wanted him to know in advance and he said I should take it, that I was ready to take it, so I took it.
“I was in Barcelona thanks to Fran and I felt I needed to speak to him. I took over in January and we won nothing. We were second in the league, semi-finals of the cup, but we reached the Champions League final and I feel that was the reason they renewed my contract. I think for them I was an interim, but we got to the final, the players were happy with me, how we were training and what we were doing, so they renewed me and the next season we started to win almost everything.”
Teixidor adds “It was a surprise when we got into the first final in Budapest because it came earlier than we thought it would do. It came in a moment where we were doing great things, but there was a big gap to Lyon, mainly the physical preparation, we were not there yet. We all knew and were conscious of how big the step forward was to reach the final, but we were pretty sure we were not going to win that match.
“It didn’t matter to us because reaching the final was already a success and what it meant for them and the possibilities it opened was like a gift in itself. We prepared as much as we could, went to the final with all possibilities open. We knew it would be very, very hard to win, but it also shifted their mentality in the team convinced themselves of the possibility they had. It confirmed the path we took was the correct one and when we lost the final all we decided was to train more and to train better, and that happened in the end. It was an acceleration of the story, it was a surprise, but a nice surprise which confirmed to us we were doing a great job and it confirmed we should put this much effort into the team.”
The day after the final, Cortes sat down with his leadership of group Alexia, Vicky Losada, Sandra Paños and Marta Torrejón, and together they decided they were going to work harder and better every day to take that next step.
“Against Lyon, I felt and we all felt they were better, especially in fitness,” admits Cortés. “We didn’t just improve that, we started to play better because we kept understanding better how we wanted to play, but one thing we changed between Budapest and Gothenburg was our mentality.
“In Budapest, we went there to enjoy the experience. It was our first final, we didn’t know if we would play another final, whereas Lyon played the final to win.”
Before they would return to Europe’s showpiece final in Sweden two years later, taking on Women’s Super League champions Chelsea, Barcelona got back on top in Spain, winning all three domestic trophies on offer during a run to the semi-finals of the Champions League.
The focus wasn’t on constant star signings, except for the likes of Wolfsburg star Caroline Graham Hansen, but continuing to develop the likes of Alexia and Bonmatí into world class superstars, around a system developed by Cortés and his staff to turn them into a dominant force.
“There was not a single thing that is the explanation for our success, but a set of things,” says Teixidor. “One of the most important things we did was have the whole club involved. When you have a big club like Barcelona, some areas don’t communicate with each other, but suddenly we had something that could grow, could be of interest, could mean a different approach to the development of sports.
“We were aware Barcelona had this power to continue a conversation we were starting…”
“We had very good players and for me my communication, press and marketing area, everyone was aware we were building something very, very important. When they went out to sell the club to people, to speak to the press, everyone was as one in promoting the club. It meant bringing a lot of people into rooms with the players, to hear their stories and how interesting and how beautiful what they’d been through was and the possibility to build a fully professional club for women not just in Barcelona, but for Spain and for the world.
“We were aware Barcelona had this power to continue a conversation we were starting and this was my main point. Second was to open up this possibility to everyone in the club and then bring it outside. We had to have everyone know we were doing this. We had an average crowd of 300 people and this was counting the matches in the Champions League. On a normal weekend we would sell a few hundred. We had to have members come to our matches, if they were there supporting the team and seeing what they were doing every Sunday, we could explain how good they could be and what they were doing”
Teixidor continues “One thing I did most was to invite people to see the matches. I wanted businesswomen, lawyers, politicians, anyone around the club to who women’s issues mattered, I wanted them involved. When I left our average crowd was around 1,700. It was a very big change in those five years and it meant we had succeeded in creating allies with members and with fans. You engage people and people ask for more. They wanted jerseys, they wanted interviews, so we created everything. My team didn’t have anything to give out to fans, so we started to produce one year at Christmas postcards with photos and names of the players, something players could give out and sign for fans at the end of matches. This started to generate interest, people wanted to collect all the cards. It was small things we wanted to do to create links between members and players.”
On the pitch, Barcelona were fast becoming unstoppable. In the 2020-21 season, they once again won the league and cup, winning 33 of their 34 league games amidst finishing 25 points ahead of their nearest rivals.
They also returned to the Champions League, in what despite being an incredible season would turn out to be the last game for Cortés as Barcelona dismantled England’s best team, flying into a 4-0 lead after just 35 minutes.
“Two years later everything we did the weeks before the final was very different,” admits the former head coach. “We prepared like any other match, but thinking ‘we are here to win the Champions League’ and that was it.
“We lived the experience before. Now, we didn’t want to live it, we wanted to win. We were ready to change and to win this trophy. We thought we were similar to Chelsea, but we knew our plan and we relied on that. As staff, we prepared a good match, understanding the threats of Chelsea but also the weaknesses of Chelsea and we played an incredible match, particularly those first 35 minutes.”
Cortés didn’t rely on a constant stream of star signings, but an evolution year by year of adding one or two specific players to what they already had in a strong core of homegrown players and those the club had developed themselves.
Moulded into a specific style of play, Barcelona had become unstoppable, and since have gone on to continue dominating Spanish football, only avoiding a second consecutive unbeaten season by a final day defeat several weeks ago.
“Our budget wasn’t the highest, so we had to make it different and we said we would sign and keep players who want to be the best and work so hard with these players. That was one of the keys of the project, because it is easy to work with players who want to be the best.
“The second thing was the style of play. I said ‘we are going to work hard, work a lot, but enjoy playing and making people enjoy watching us’. After that, I said the best players would come, they would want to play for Barcelona, and we saw that last summer with players like Lucy Bronze. That was a player we’d have never been able to sign four or five years ago, but now she wanted to play for Barcelona.”
He continues, “I said to Markel ‘we have good players in Spain, so if we want to sign foreign players, she should be one special player’. She needed to have something very special or very different from what we had. If we have Mariona for example and a foreign player who is similar, then we don’t need to sign them. But if we have a chance to sign Caroline, who I think is the best one-v-one player in the world, then we have to.
“Or if we have the chance to sign Oshoala, who is a special player, maybe the fastest and strongest player in Spain, then we sign this player. Our Champions League final against Chelsea, only Lieke and Caroline and Kheira [Hamraoui] because of a suspension started, the rest were Spanish, we built our project with national players. I think that was important because they understood perfectly what we wanted, how we wanted to play and then a few players from abroad with something special.
One player who went to another level under Cortés and has continued to do so is midfielder Alexia, now a two-time Ballon d’Or and FIFA Best winner.
She has missed most of the season with an ACL injury picked up on the eve of Euro 2022 last summer, but returned to action last month and has every chance of being involved in Saturday’s Champions League final against Wolfsburg, where Jonatan Giráldez’s side will be looking to bounce back from last year’s defeat to Lyon.
“The key is she wanted to be the best,” says Cortés, who left in 2021 to be replaced by Giráldez, who had been his assistant. “Alexis wanted to be the best and improve her level. When I took over, she wasn’t a main player, she wasn’t playing every game, she was on the bench a lot. I decided to empower her, to build a project around her, using her as a key player because I felt she had a special understanding of the game. Making the right decisions, but also making other players play better. When we did some rotations because in my last season we played 52 games, we had a problem with Alexia because we needed her to rest, but we knew if she played, the whole team played better.
“She was always in the right position, driving people forward and helping others with her words. She was so important in the team and it’s fantastic to see the improvement because she is such a hard worker. She works hard every training session, every day, she’s not good just on the field, but off it. She takes care of herself when it comes to nutrition, her fitness, everything. She loves football, she watches football all day, she breathes football. You can speak to Alexia about anything regarding football.”
Cortes stepped away after the Champions League success in 2021, a year after Teixidor herself moved on to pastures new, paving the way for new leadership on and off the field, but the success the club is still enjoying to this day is down to many of the changes Teixidor put in place off the field and the effort she put in every day to improve every area of the club.
As the club prepares for a fourth Champions League final in five seasons, Teixidor admits she is “proud” of the role she was able to play in the professionalisation of the club on the women’s side.
“It allowed me to lead a project from a governance position to make things happen faster and design lots of projects to help get it to where it is. I have a close relationship with the players and I think we built a family of people helping each other, giving hands to each other to push it forward and it’s very satisfying to see the effort has blossomed the way it has done.
“For me, it’s wonderful to see all of their achievements. When Alexia wins a prize, it makes me smile because I’ve had lots of conversations with them. I’ve seen the moments where they believed they couldn’t move forward and we provided them with everything they needed. The psychologists, the doctors, growing of the staff, better training pitches, every single thing we did for them made a change and allowed them to perform better and to feel better and it has turned them into the great sportswomen they are now.”