Arsenal's Mariona Caldentey: 'What England did to help women’s football explode, Spain didn’t do'

Arsenal’s Spanish forward on fighting to win support for women’s football, leaving a successful Barcelona team and the stress of winning the World Cup

Mariona Caldentey of Arsenal during the UEFA Women's Champions League 2024/25 Second Round Second Leg match between Arsenal and Hacken at Meadow Park on September 26, 2024 in Borehamwood, England. (Photo by Harry Murphy/Getty Images)

When Mariona Caldentey was a student, reading sports science at university, she could see the Camp Nou scoreboard from her bedroom window on the top floor of 63 Travessera de les Corts. On the nights when she and her flatmates didn’t stroll across to the stadium, they would hear goals before they saw them on TV. They played too, becoming league champions, but never imagined themselves over there. “Our reality was Astroturf pitches with no stands,” she recalls.

Yet in April 2022, eight years on, 91,648 people came to watch them, breaking Barcelona’s own world record set a fortnight before. “It all happened so quick; one day we’ll realise what we achieved, all we did for change to come,” she says.