Laia Balleste, the Spain-born player who earned a last-minute call-up… for Switzerland

New York Times

3 days ago

Laia Balleste was at her parents' house in L'Ampolla, a town of fewer than 4,000 inhabitants in the Ebro Delta in the north-east of Spain. It was June 30 and a heatwave was sweeping across the region.
It had been days since all the national teams had announced their final squads for the European Championship and her name was not on Switzerland's list. She was disappointed but had accepted it.
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She returned to her parents' house. To escape the heat they were sitting on the terrace — recently converted into a chill-out area — watching Wimbledon tennis matches on television.
Suddenly, the phone rang. She jumped out of her chair, turned down the volume of the television and looked at her mother, who understood immediately. Her two dogs started barking while Balleste was on the phone. Her mother took them to the kitchen so they would not make any noise. As she watched Balleste talk on the phone through the kitchen window, she jumped up and down with pride while her daughter gestured to her to keep quiet.
When Balleste hung up, both started jumping, shouting and crying. Her father was already in bed and they woke him up shouting while he was still trying to figure out what was going on, a little disoriented from sleep. They bought her plane tickets and her father took her to the airport at 3am.
She had made it. Balleste was going to the Euros with Switzerland.
While most of Balleste's contemporaries dream of being selected for Spain, the world champions, she had long had something else in mind: Switzerland.
The 26-year-old plays for Espanyol as a centre-back. What few people knew was that she has dual nationality, Spanish and Swiss. She was born and raised in Catalonia, daughter of a Catalan father and a Swiss mother. Her second surname is proof of this: Sciora.
In fact, she was selected on several occasions when she was younger to play for the Catalan team. This was an unofficial team where she played alongside other players, including Aitana Bonmati.
The Swiss Federation was unaware of her availability until her agent contacted them to inform them. Pia Sundhage, the manager of the Euros hosts, found out and did not hesitate to call her up in for Nations League group stage matches in April.
But Sundhage did not include her in the squad for the Euros.
However, Luana Buhler's withdrawal from the squad due to knee problems opened a window for Balleste, who will now be in the squad for Friday's quarter-final between the two countries she is eligible to play for.
Her maternal grandparents had to move from Neuchatel to southern Catalonia when Corinne, Balleste's mother, was 12 years old. Her grandfather had fallen ill and doctors recommended a change of scenery and a move to a warmer climate to improve his health. However, this did not work. His health never recovered and after his death, her grandmother decided to stay with her six children and move forward in their new home, L'Ampolla.
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'Every summer we went to Cullera, a coastal town south of Valencia, on holiday,' Corinne Sciora, Laia's mother, tells The Athletic. 'My father loved fishing. In Switzerland, he fished in rivers and in the summer he went to Cullera to fish for sea bass. My parents wanted to find a place to live near a river so he could continue his hobby of fishing in the river and the sea.'
There, Corinne started a family and, together with her husband, had two children: Alex and Laia. During the summers, they would all visit Switzerland, stopping off in France to visit family.
Balleste began to show an interest in football when she was four years old.
'She had two options,' Sciora explains. 'She was a very good swimmer and we could have driven 15 minutes to go swimming and compete, or we could have stayed in the village so she could play football. For her, it was all about football. The saying goes that some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, but in her case she was born with a ball. It was her obsession.
'One of the times we visited Laia's aunt in Switzerland, we walked near a very large football field in the town of Sonceboz. There were children playing football and she stayed there watching. The coach came up to her and asked if she wanted to join them. She started playing and the coach came over to tell us to move there because he wanted to sign her up.
'When she played for L'Ampolla and won a match, which was rare, she always said she wanted to go and play in the Bundesliga (in Germany) and that the national team would call her. I didn't want to discourage her, but I let her know it was very difficult. But she always insisted, and look, sometimes dreams do come true.'
Balleste has played for several clubs: Valencia B, Deportivo Alaves, DUX Logrono, Rayo Vallecano, Sporting Huelva and Espanyol. When she began to show promise as an international player, her priority was always Switzerland.
'I have to tell you that I support the Swiss national team,' the player said in an interview with Estadio Deportivo in July 2023. 'Sometimes people ask me what I would do if I had to choose between playing for one or the other, and I always say that I would choose Switzerland… for my mother.
'In the end, she's the one who always took me to the football pitches and made the most sacrifices in that sense. It's that feeling that I owe it to her and my maternal grandmother, who is like my second mother. They would be so proud. That would be one of my goals, to play there for them.'
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When she was a child, at her school in a small village, there were few extracurricular activities to choose from. It was either dance or football, and she did not even want to hear about dance. Her mother supported her from the very beginning and made every effort to give her the support she needed to do what she loved most.
Years later, now playing in Spain's top flight, Balleste feels indebted to her, to her grandmother, and to Switzerland.
She has yet to feature at these Euros but there is a chance her tournament debut could come against Spain.
'She didn't expect to face Spain or make it to the quarter-finals,' her mother says. 'For them, it's already a huge achievement. For her, the Euros is a party. She always tells me that she never would have believed that fans in Switzerland could be so supportive of the players. She's very excited. It's an experience she'll never forget.'