When you love something, that sometimes means you have to leave it.
The announcement from Alexia Putellas that she would be leaving the club of her ACTUAL life, a story lived from childhood and a father wanting her to one day, fight for the colors, an arc of sustained excellence that ended with helping that very same team lift the Champions League trophy, hit me and a lot of other people like a ton of bricks.
In looking for the words to explain why, for me they are in fact pretty simple, once the world is no longer being seen through a veil of tears: Alexia Putellas embodies everything that Barça is supposed to stand for. From coming up through the system to helping build a team that became a juggernaut, a selfless devotion to a club that is rare.
So many culers don’t and will never understand why Barça Femeni is special, and has a special place in the hearts of those who do understand. And that’s okay. But it’s weird to remember the first time you saw a player, having no idea who it was but seeing them and their game and saying, “Who TF IS that?”
On a pitch stuffed with fellow professionals, like that player at the top of their profession, and this player just makes everyone look second class. She goes where she wants, does what she wants, scores, assists, plays like she has already seen a video of the match.
The greatest players make a sport feel like a game in the childhood sense, this thing approached with unbridled joy. Alexia Putellas always seemed to play the game with a sense of “Wheeeee!” that is rare in a player of that level, joy unbound by the idea of failure. If you don’t try, you won’t succeed. “I have the skill to execute that pass, so here goes.”
Like any great athlete in any field, she played the game with a bigger pitch. Just like basketball shooters say when they are on one of those nights, the hoop looks like it’s the size of a swimming pool, her quality made the impossible not only possible, but expected.
Her celebration after slamming home the goal that assured the Champions League title became iconic — it was the best doing the best at a moment when the best was required, as much affirmation as execution, an exorcism of emotion from a player who ascended to the summit after starting below ground.
Knowing when to leave is an art. Like Xavi, who left the Camp Nou after a treble celebration, Alexia leaves after a quadruple celebration, and her gold dust flecked boots were all over it.
Athletes are the harshest judges of their performance level, even when it seems like they aren’t, like they are hanging on too long. They know, because they know. The better the athlete, the clearer the knowledge. Great athletes also have egos. Michael Jordan will tell anyone, in a moment of honesty, that he shouldn’t have come back, that the moment when he dropped in the title-clinching shot, pose held for the cameras and posterity, should have been it.
Athletes know.
There is no arguing about the decline of Alexia, something we can admit even as we can appreciate and revere her. The shots that would have been goals that this season went wide or were too soft to bother the keeper, the passes over or underhit or struck a second too late so they were cut out at the defense instead of yet another lustrous assist — the signs were there.
If we could see them, you know she could see them, but also feel them. Someone — memory escapes me who — said they knew it was time to retire when the game started feeling like it was being played at normal speed. This referenced the quality that the greats have, which reduces things to slow motion, like they are the only one moving at normal speed.
She is being quoted as saying that part of why she is leaving is to not stand in the way of the natural progression of the team, also an extraordinary thing, because athletes have egos. They say they are going to “stay and fight for a place” and similar things. The admission that it’s time is rare. And maybe, just maybe, had the team seen failure at that topmost rung, she might have stayed another season.
Maybe.
Barça Femeni is an incredible team. During the match feed, which I couldn’t wait to watch as soon as we returned from Oslo, the commentators were talking about how stacked with young talent the team was, that youth underscoring those statements. Clara Serrajordi, at 18, played a Final like she was a veteran of many more years. Aicha Camara subbed on for Mapi Leon and made the things that the veteran put effort into look easy. Youth will be served.
Perhaps it was less difficult for Alexia to leave because like any proud parent, you watch a grown, successful child do things you could never have imagined and smile in satisfaction. She was there from the beginning, through all the failures, when Femeni wasn’t a colossus, there to raise them up, to present an unassailable level like the sign at amusement parks that read, “You must be THIS tall to ride this rollercoaster.”
“You must be THIS good to do this. Let’s get there together.”
This hits so hard because she was part of the team in a way that transcended being a player. Their excellence was her excellence in that same Jordanesque way, as a team grew with her, learned to excel as she did, finally tapping her on the shoulder and saying, “We’re ready. Thank you for absolutely all of this, but we are ready.”
But even if they are, and they are, it will feel weird for a long time to not have number 11 gliding around the pitch, captain’s armband on, making difficult moments look easy but also getting down and dirty when needed.
She has more football in her, even if not at the topmost level, but it’s hard not to wish she would hang up the boots. Some players don’t feel right in any other shirt, and Alexia Putellas is one of them. She was ours, is ours, will always be ours. Eterna.