"If I continued playing football, I ran the risk of not being able to go up and down stairs"

BarcelonaIt is always surprising when a footballer announces her retirement at 29. A player's professional life can extend to around 40 years, but Andrea Falcón's (Arucas, 1997) knee said enough at 28. “No matter how much I wanted to continue, you are not objective. The doctors told me that if I wanted to be able to walk, go up or down stairs, I had to make this decision. If I continued playing football, I would make my life impossible,” she confesses on a phone call with ARA.

This conversation took place last December and, on August 5, the ex-Barcelona player made it official on her social media that she was hanging up her boots. “I am young, but I have lived a lot; football has given me everything, I have enjoyed everything and now I would like to enjoy life in another way,” she explains. “I would run for ten minutes and I couldn’t walk anymore. My life was leaving training, arriving home and doing everything possible to be able to train the next day with as little pain as possible. Never without pain,” adds Falcón, who is adapting to the new routines. “What I miss most is being surrounded by people. You train and there are many of us, it feels very strange not talking to many people every day.”

With an emotional video, Falcón holds onto the mark she has left among her teammates. “My great challenge was that when I retired, people would remember me for being a good person, with a smile and always willing to help. I am left with all the affection I have received, more than the titles,” assures Falcón, who in the farewell video received messages from Mariona Caldentey, Sandra Paños, Ana Maria Crnogorcevic or Bruna Vilamala, among others.

Leaving home at 15 years old

The former player would like to continue to be involved in sports through psychology, a career she has studied. “It’s a taboo subject. People have the idea that you only go to the psychologist when you have serious mental problems and you don’t want anyone to find out for fear of what they will think. I think that even the mentally healthiest person needs to go to the psychologist at some point. You don’t have to go when you’re feeling bad, but rather as a way to vent, to give you tools to learn to manage situations that are difficult for you,” she explains.

Falcón left home at just 15 years old. The former footballer left her entire family in the Canary Islands to go to the other end of Spain to play for Barça. “It was a summer day, I was still sleeping at noon when my mother called me to ask if I would go to Barcelona. I hung up thinking it was a joke and she came home from work to tell me that if I wanted, I could start pre-season with Barça the following week. The night before I left, I slept with my parents, I wasn’t aware of the decision I had made until I saw myself there alone,” she recalls.

“I had never dreamed of being a footballer, because it is not could you are a woman. The first month you are not yet aware of it because you see it as a holiday, but when I returned from the preseason and found myself alone in the apartment, I realized the reality,” recounts Falcón, who explains that she lived in Collblanc with Sonia Bermúdez – current coach of Spain – and Meli Nicolau. “Sonia was like an older sister to me. Now they go to La Masia and study there, but I had to get up at six in the morning to go to high school. You had to do everything; wash clothes, cook…,” she compares.

Exit to return

A sacrifice that bore fruit. He left Barça for Atlético de Madrid, where he won three leagues in three years, before returning to the Catalan club. “Markel Zubizarreta [then Barça's sporting director] told me. You left here winning, we've seen you win at Atlético and we'll bring you back,” he recalls, laughing. And indeed it worked. Falcón returned to Barça in 2019 and, since then, the Catalan team has won the league every season.

In addition, the former player was also part of the squad that achieved the club's first Champions League title in history in Gothenburg in 2021. “It was the consecration of the project. Barça has not stopped betting on the women's team since the beginning, even when they lost against Atlético de Madrid they continued to bet on them. It is not a team formed from money, but from bets from the grassroots, that the best signing is a homegrown player,” he points out.

In Spain, on the other hand, this decisive impulse is lacking. “Women's football has evolved incredibly, but in recent years it has stagnated a bit. We have many of the best players in the world, but this point of visibility, of betting on the product, is missing," she asks.