Damaris Egurrola (Orlando, USA; 24 years old) will play this Saturday in the Champions League final in San Mamés with Olympique Lyon, but if things had not gone wrong when he left Athletic in the summer of 2020, he would probably defend the shirt of Barça, his rival in Bilbao. The midfielder, who began to like football thanks to Ronaldinho’s plasticity, was about to sign with the Barça club four years ago, but the agreement was cut short when her former team demanded 250,000 euros for her even though her contract was ending. and on the basis of a controversial clause in the collective agreement that establishes compensation for training rights. Damaris raised her voice, went to trial and finally went abroad, where the law does not apply. She spent half a season at Everton, until Lyon paid 100,000 euros for her—one of the most expensive signings in history—in January 2021. The left-footed midfielder, a key pillar in the French team’s midfield, says that Sometimes he imagines what that other life would have been like if the circumstances had been different. “I’m not hiding, it goes through my head. I think about where I could have ended up, but today I am very happy where I am. I have been playing for the club of my dreams for almost four years. That was very hard, but I am a person who turns the page quickly,” she says in an interview with EL PAÍS carried out on Monday.
With a Basque father, a Dutch mother and born in the United States – she has all three nationalities – Egurrola not only suffered this dilemma, but in April 2022 she made the decision to play for the Netherlands after the then Spanish coach, Jorge Vilda, It had been almost three years without calling her up for the senior team. Damaris, who had made his debut with La Roja in a friendly in May 2019 against Cameroon after achieving success in Spain’s youth ranks, got into a public exchange of statements with Vilda and accused him of lying when he said he had tried to contact her. to select it. “I had to raise my voice, it was what I needed, for people to know the truth,” says the midfielder, who at the U20 World Cup had already had a run-in with the coach in the locker room when he blurted out that he didn’t like how he played. This Saturday she will face several friends with whom she shared a jersey and successes in the U17 – silver in the European Championship and bronze in the World Cup -, the U19 – gold in the European Championship – and the U20 – World Championship runner-up -: Patri Guijarro, Aitana Bonmatí , Ona Batlle, Cata Coll and Claudia Pina. “I have wonderful memories. At those ages we live extreme experiences traveling to distant countries and winning almost everything. I consider them my friends, I talk to them throughout the season, but whenever we play against each other we stop talking a week before. We love each other very much, but it is what suits us when a game like this is at stake,” she explains.
Damaris Egurrola gives a pass during the second leg of the Champions League semi-final against PSG at the Parc des Princes on April 28. Catherine Steenkeste (Getty Images)
Saturday’s crash is especially emotional for her. Damaris arrived in Spain when she was six years old after living in Florida. Her father, Pablo, was a professional pelota player there, but a strike that lasted for years pushed the Egurrola family to move to Euskadi. “It was when I started playing sports. Everything at the same time: soccer, tennis, Basque pelota by hand, with a shovel… I tried everything until I had to decide. Everyone told me that I was better at tennis, but I listened to what made me happiest, which was soccer, having a team around me. In tennis, when she went to train, she was very alone and didn’t have such a good time,” she says.
In football he rose until he made his debut in the First Division with Athletic in December 2015, when he was only 16 years old. That season he won the League. Before, in San Mamés she had been a ball boy: “Since I was little, my dream is to win the Champions League, and being able to do it in San Mamés, with the team of my dreams, would be even more special. I remember when I was a little girl and I watched Lyon matches with my parents as best I could on the computer because they weren’t on TV. Years ago I watched my teammates play finals, and this week I am a few days away from doing it myself. I think sometimes I’m still not aware.”
His adaptation to Lyon was instantaneous. When he arrived he spoke Spanish, Basque, English and Dutch, and now he also speaks French. “There is a very good connection between the best soccer players in the world. They helped me from the first minute. There are at least five players who are like my mothers or my older sisters. A few days later they hit my mentality. In the first training sessions I already saw that we had to win even the rondos,” says Egurrola, who was unable to play due to injury in the 2022 final in which the French team knocked down Barça in Turin. “I am very calm and I don’t usually get nervous, but this is an exceptional case. I’m managing it the best I can, but without changing my routine. In the first final I learned a lot from my teammates, who have won everything: how they assumed that they would run away all week, forget about data, statistics, who is the favorite… just prepare the final as best as possible,” she says.
Fundamental this season in the midfield of Lyon, the team that has dominated in Europe in the last decade and a half with eight Champions Leagues, Egurrola believes that there is no favorite for the final. Barcelona has lost the two games it played against Olympique – in fact, it has lost in all five games between them – but it is the current champion and beating the French would have enormous symbolism: a third orejona – the second in a row – with a triumph at last against the ogre of European football, a way of saying that continental hegemony may be changing: “We are not concerned about that issue. Everyone is aware of Lyon’s history when they see their record. Obviously, Barça is doing things very well, but so are we. It is one of the best games that can be seen today.”
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2024-05-23 03:15:00
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