Aitana Bonmatí and Lionel Messi, FIFA’s The Best 2024 awards for the best players of the year | Soccer | Sports

For Aitana Bonmatí there was a sweet touch to close a perfect season. The icing that has crowned the cake and that closes the circle of football success has arrived, once again, as a trophy. And on the stage of the Eventim Apollo Auditorium in London: Aitana is the best player in the world according to FIFA. She picked up the baton from her partner Alexia Putellas in a gala that breathed football in a feminine key: all the awards were presented by women, in tribute to the recent World Cup in Australia and New Zealand; The legendary Marta, retired after the championship, was honored with a special award for her career, and the closing was given by Aitana who is already global, like the success of the team she led last summer.

“It has been an exceptional, unique year that I will remember for a lifetime. Collecting this award is an honor, but I owe it to the teams I have belonged to, Barça and the national team, to my teammates. Without you I wouldn’t be here, nor would I be the player I am. Proud to be part of a group of players that is changing the rules of the game.”

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The Barça player is the protagonist of this 2023, she is a footballer of the present and the future. She knows it, and she always wants more. “Ambition does not stop here,” she said in the wake of the Ballon d’Or that she embraced on October 30. She still has a couple of pending and important achievements between her eyebrows: winning an absolute European Championship with the Spanish team and winning the gold medal in the Olympic Games. At 25 years old, she is more than in time—and physically fit—to expand her limits.

For her, the awards are not a backpack, they do not weigh her down emotionally and she does not have any more pressure. “I already demand enough from myself to focus on what is expected of me,” she explained in an interview with this medium. Pure nonconformity and desire—now under control—, the legacy of Cruyff’s 14 on the field, an introvert converted into the main attraction and focus, a literary footballer concerned about social inequalities. All that is Aitana, who started as the great favorite to win the prize. Behind her, Linda Caicedo and Jennifer Hermoso, a teammate and ex-Azulgrana, have been on the verge of winning the award. The award values ​​achievements between August 1, 2022 and August 20, 2023, coinciding with the World Cup final where the Spanish team lifted the cup.

The showcase seems to be too small for Sant Pere de Ribes: Ballon d’Or, UEFA’s best player and MVP in the World Cup, in addition to winning the Spanish Super Cup, the Champions League—MVP in both competitions—and the Spanish League. . All in a season in which she has added 37 games, 18 goals and 20 assists with Barcelona in official matches, although in her eight seasons at the Johan Cruyff Stadium she has reached 247 games and 85 goals dressed in Barça. A long list of awards and achievements that she hopes to expand, since despite ending her contract with Barcelona in 2025 and the club is focused on closing folders that end this season, her continuity is a priority.

A club that supported Aitana on the expedition to London. The Catalan woman got off the plane smiling, dressed in a long jacket. There was no lack of representation from the board – with Xavi Puig and Elena Fort – and from the team – Jonathan Giráldez, finalist for best coach, Cata Coll, finalist for best goalkeeper; and also Keira Walsh and Lucy Bronze, for their nomination in the FIFA ideal eleven. It is with the foreign players that the Catalan has the best feeling in the locker room. On the field she has made clear her football connection with Caroline Graham Hansen, the great forgotten of individual awards, although she has no shortage of merits, and the team’s top scorer: between the two they have created a scoring and dangerous duo in front of any defense . This season, so far, Aitana already has half as many goals for Barça as last year, nine.

After placing the icing on the cake and taking it from London to Sant Pere de Ribes, he will return to his daily routine and train to prepare for a big event: this Wednesday FC Barcelona will face Real Madrid in the semi-final of the Spanish Women’s Super Cup. Surely Aitana will want to repeat last year’s feat: win, and start another gold cycle.

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2024-01-15 21:20:44
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