Esther González: ‘Now girls can grow up in Spain knowing we have Ballon d'Or winners'
Esther González is at the top of her game. The 32-year-old striker's list of accolades – World Cup winner, three-time Liga F champion, NWSL champion, Copa de la Reina victor and Concacaf W Champions Cup winner – is matched by few in the sport. But as a young girl growing up in southern Spain, her path was uncertain, rife with obstacles: 'As a child, I dreamed of what I wanted to be when I grew up. It was a soccer player. But, let's say, circumstances didn't allow me to see women's soccer or anything close to women's soccer.'
Growing up with three sisters, González's earliest memories of football were playing with her hermanas in their small village in Andalusia. She dreamed of being a footballer, but there wasn't a path before her. The shy young talent with a nose for goals would play with the local boys: they needed a goalscorer and she stepped in. As González grew, her father took her on car journeys of more than four hours each way to get to training.
Today González and Spanish women's football are in a much different place: 'The change in mentality that took place in Spain was incredible, because until about five years ago the visibility we had was very low,' she says. 'So we really had to work hard and many times we had to work in the shadows. Girls can now grow up knowing that in Spain there are Ballon d'Or players who can become world champions.'
Since the inaugural Ballon d'Or Feminin in 2018, four of six trophies have gone to two Spanish players, twice each to Barcelona's Alexia Putellas and Aitana Bonmatí. On the challenges they all faced, González says: 'I feel lucky because I am part of that transition, because I have lived the part from when, let's say, we had almost no opportunities to live … '
The drive to succeed despite inordinate obstacles is evident in the way González plays, and the unique journey she's taken. The 5ft 3in forward is skilled in the air despite her height, has a remarkable intuition for time and space, astutely adapts her game to the opposition, and contributes defensively. She left Real Madrid in 2023 as their all-time leading scorer, with 39 goals in 77 games, and co-leads the NWSL golden boot race with seven goals in 11 games.
'I'm not just a player, but a player who thinks a lot, who works hard on matches even before they start, because I try to determine who I'm facing and who I'm not.'
This summer in Switzerland, González will be one of four Spain players from the NWSL at the Euros. Now at Gotham FC, she says the challenge of something new, something unique, was behind her move to the US. She was attracted to Gotham's ambitions, the league's competitive depth. 'When I left Spain to come here, I came to prove that I was also a much more complete player, better than the one who only knows how to touch the ball, than the one who also knows how to adapt.'
González signed for Gotham FC in the summer of 2023, and quickly made an impact, scoring the winning goal in the NWSL Championship. In May in Mexico, she scored Gotham's winner in a 1-0 victory over Tigres in the Concacaf W Champions Cup, securing her second trophy Stateside.
Two more goals followed for Spain in the Nations League, but González is not resting on her laurels. 'I hope I'm not in my best moment. I hope to have better moments, that the best is yet to come.'
Ambitious, focused, invigorated by hard-earned achievements – just like her national team. After winning their first World Cup in 2023, and enduring the fallout from the Rubiales scandal, Spain's confidence in major tournaments has improved on 2022, when La Roja lost 2-1 to England in the quarter-final (that goal scored by González). 'In order to create things you have to first believe that you can achieve them,' she says. 'As a team, we believe we can achieve everything.'
Of the Euros, where Spain share a competitive group with Italy, Belgium and Portugal, she adds: 'It will be difficult, tough, there will be times when we're tired, when there's also a lot of traveling involved, but to achieve things, you have to believe that you can achieve them. And so I believe and work to make that happen.'
Is there anything you have always wanted to ask the USWNT and former Chelsea coach Emma Hayes? Then now is your chance.
I was lucky to score a goal. It must be because I'm wearing Pernille Harder's shirt' – Christian Eriksen after scoring a goal for Denmark's men against Northern Ireland. The team wore women's jerseys in a friendly against Northern Ireland in Copenhagen.
USL summit: The USA's second top-flight professional women's football league, the USL Super League, will have its first Championship final as a division one sports league on Saturday evening. The regular season's runners-up Tampa Bay Sun face fourth-placed Fort Lauderdale United.
Bumpy ride: In Cary, North Carolina, a squad of USWNT veterans (including World Cup-winning legends such as Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, Heather O'Reilly and Ali Krieger) teamed up with rising NCAA stars to win the TST Women's Tournament for a second straight year. The US team beat Bumpy Pitch FC 3-0 to claim the seven-a-side tournament's $1m prize.
Over the weekend, the 25-year-old Chicago Stars forward Ally Schlegel scored her first goal of the year from 34.4 yards– that's a Chicago record.
Arsenal have announced that all of the club's home WSL matches will be played at the Emirates next season. Suzanne Wrack has more.
And if you missed Tuesday's edition of Moving the Goalposts, catch up on our interview with Aisha Masaka right here.
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Daily Mail
12 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Silver-tongued Trent Alexander-Arnold finds just the right words on his Real Madrid debut, writes IAN HERBERT
His opening words were 'Buenos dias a todos' ('Hello to you all') and since Trent Alexander-Arnold had stepped up to speak with no notes, the audience of Real Madrid dignitaries assumed this would be the extent of his diplomatically rehearsed Spanish. But he continued, sentence after sentence, without a moment's hesitation, building an immaculate one-minute speech in what sports paper Diario AS described as 'perfect' Spanish. 'I have a lot of desire to show the Madridistas how I play,' he said in the language of his new home. 'I'm aware of the responsibilities.' He concluded with a nod to Real's famous anthem Hala Madrid!...y nada mas ('Hail Madrid and nothing else') by saying: 'Gracias and hala Madrid!' Gareth Bale this was not. They have seen a fair few British players unveiled in this city and perhaps none brought such an aura as David Beckham, whose introduction by Real in 2003 was watched by an audience of two million supporters on Real Madrid TV and who had shifted 8,000 replica shirts with his name on the back before he had even uttered a word. But at his presentation as a Real player, Beckham merely said, 'Thank you, you've made me a very happy man', in English. They have never witnessed an introduction like Thursday's. Later, at Alexander-Arnold's inaugural press conference — which attracted a far smaller crowd than Beckham's — there was the rather awkward question of how his Spanish got to be so good when he has supposedly been wracked with indecision about whether to leave Liverpool over recent months. His declaration that 'this is a very exciting day that I've been waiting for, for a long time' did not exactly dampen suspicions that he had not been totally focused on Arne Slot. He then tried, not altogether convincingly, to row back a little. 'By waiting 'a long time' it was a couple of weeks, not years!' he said. 'But I am very excited to be here.' That is the tightrope the 26-year-old walked, wanting to convey his delight with new horizons, yet not wanting to offend those he has left behind, where his departure for a mere £10million, virtually out of contract, provoked such a negative response last month. But in that minute or so of impeccable Spanish and in the subsequent discussion, we saw an individual balancing self-confidence and big ambition with understatement, modesty and the lack of a raging ego. One who, after 20 years, is ready to strike out beyond Liverpool in a way some players from that city never did. It was impossible not to think, 'Good luck to you.' There had been jet-black storm clouds over the Spanish capital late on Wednesday, the day he flew out here, and a fair few bumpy landings around Madrid's Barajas Airport. The uncomfortable intensity of what he was getting into also quickly became known to him. Real Madrid TV's 'Bienvenido, Alexander-Arnold' special was up and running hours before he did the usual introductory rituals, including endless 'thumbs up' photocalls and signatures. The show saw him gazing out of the back window of a limousine on the drive to the vast landscaped training complex at Valdebebas in searing morning heat. Ciudad Real Madrid is so vast that buggies are supplied to get around it. It is a far cry from Liverpool's old Melwood training ground, where as a boy he would peer through gaps in the grey walls, trying to glimpse his heroes. Spain's press obsessed over the fact that he would be prevented from taking the '66' jersey which he made iconic at Liverpool. First-team players in La Liga may not take numbers above 25. The maximum of 11 characters for a name on the back of a Real jersey also meant he would be merely 'Trent', Marca calculated. Alexander-Arnold revealed he had reached his own decision about what he would be called. 'I always found that, in Europe, the whole name situation confused a lot of people, with it being double-barrelled,' he said. 'They called me Alex, Arnold, Alexander, Trent. There's a lot to go on, so let's make it easy. Trent on the back. That's what people can call me.' A man with his own identity, then, and — he claimed — one with his own mind. Much has been made of the part his 'very good friend' and England teammate Jude Bellingham played in persuading him to come here, though he played that down. 'We spoke,' he said. 'But it wasn't exactly what people thought it was. A lot of people thought he had a huge part in me coming here, but the club spoke for itself. It was a huge chance.' Alexander-Arnold did not discuss Thomas Tuchel's observation that the rage Bellingham displayed at the end of England's defeat by Senegal this week is part of a 'repulsive' pattern of behaviour. 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The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Esther González: ‘Now girls can grow up in Spain knowing we have Ballon d'Or winners'
Esther González is at the top of her game. The 32-year-old striker's list of accolades – World Cup winner, three-time Liga F champion, NWSL champion, Copa de la Reina victor and Concacaf W Champions Cup winner – is matched by few in the sport. But as a young girl growing up in southern Spain, her path was uncertain, rife with obstacles: 'As a child, I dreamed of what I wanted to be when I grew up. It was a soccer player. But, let's say, circumstances didn't allow me to see women's soccer or anything close to women's soccer.' Growing up with three sisters, González's earliest memories of football were playing with her hermanas in their small village in Andalusia. She dreamed of being a footballer, but there wasn't a path before her. The shy young talent with a nose for goals would play with the local boys: they needed a goalscorer and she stepped in. As González grew, her father took her on car journeys of more than four hours each way to get to training. Today González and Spanish women's football are in a much different place: 'The change in mentality that took place in Spain was incredible, because until about five years ago the visibility we had was very low,' she says. 'So we really had to work hard and many times we had to work in the shadows. Girls can now grow up knowing that in Spain there are Ballon d'Or players who can become world champions.' Since the inaugural Ballon d'Or Feminin in 2018, four of six trophies have gone to two Spanish players, twice each to Barcelona's Alexia Putellas and Aitana Bonmatí. On the challenges they all faced, González says: 'I feel lucky because I am part of that transition, because I have lived the part from when, let's say, we had almost no opportunities to live … ' The drive to succeed despite inordinate obstacles is evident in the way González plays, and the unique journey she's taken. The 5ft 3in forward is skilled in the air despite her height, has a remarkable intuition for time and space, astutely adapts her game to the opposition, and contributes defensively. She left Real Madrid in 2023 as their all-time leading scorer, with 39 goals in 77 games, and co-leads the NWSL golden boot race with seven goals in 11 games. 'I'm not just a player, but a player who thinks a lot, who works hard on matches even before they start, because I try to determine who I'm facing and who I'm not.' This summer in Switzerland, González will be one of four Spain players from the NWSL at the Euros. Now at Gotham FC, she says the challenge of something new, something unique, was behind her move to the US. She was attracted to Gotham's ambitions, the league's competitive depth. 'When I left Spain to come here, I came to prove that I was also a much more complete player, better than the one who only knows how to touch the ball, than the one who also knows how to adapt.' González signed for Gotham FC in the summer of 2023, and quickly made an impact, scoring the winning goal in the NWSL Championship. In May in Mexico, she scored Gotham's winner in a 1-0 victory over Tigres in the Concacaf W Champions Cup, securing her second trophy Stateside. Two more goals followed for Spain in the Nations League, but González is not resting on her laurels. 'I hope I'm not in my best moment. I hope to have better moments, that the best is yet to come.' Ambitious, focused, invigorated by hard-earned achievements – just like her national team. After winning their first World Cup in 2023, and enduring the fallout from the Rubiales scandal, Spain's confidence in major tournaments has improved on 2022, when La Roja lost 2-1 to England in the quarter-final (that goal scored by González). 'In order to create things you have to first believe that you can achieve them,' she says. 'As a team, we believe we can achieve everything.' Of the Euros, where Spain share a competitive group with Italy, Belgium and Portugal, she adds: 'It will be difficult, tough, there will be times when we're tired, when there's also a lot of traveling involved, but to achieve things, you have to believe that you can achieve them. And so I believe and work to make that happen.' Is there anything you have always wanted to ask the USWNT and former Chelsea coach Emma Hayes? Then now is your chance. I was lucky to score a goal. It must be because I'm wearing Pernille Harder's shirt' – Christian Eriksen after scoring a goal for Denmark's men against Northern Ireland. The team wore women's jerseys in a friendly against Northern Ireland in Copenhagen. USL summit: The USA's second top-flight professional women's football league, the USL Super League, will have its first Championship final as a division one sports league on Saturday evening. The regular season's runners-up Tampa Bay Sun face fourth-placed Fort Lauderdale United. Bumpy ride: In Cary, North Carolina, a squad of USWNT veterans (including World Cup-winning legends such as Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, Heather O'Reilly and Ali Krieger) teamed up with rising NCAA stars to win the TST Women's Tournament for a second straight year. The US team beat Bumpy Pitch FC 3-0 to claim the seven-a-side tournament's $1m prize. Over the weekend, the 25-year-old Chicago Stars forward Ally Schlegel scored her first goal of the year from 34.4 yards– that's a Chicago record. Arsenal have announced that all of the club's home WSL matches will be played at the Emirates next season. Suzanne Wrack has more. And if you missed Tuesday's edition of Moving the Goalposts, catch up on our interview with Aisha Masaka right here.
Scottish Sun
2 days ago
- Scottish Sun
Sports channel disappears from millions of Virgin Media TV boxes – but there's another way to keep watching for FREE
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