This Saturday’s Queen’s Cup final pits one of the totems of European football, Barça, against a contender, Real Sociedad. The match (7:00 p.m., La1) looks so favorable for the Blaugrana—due to budget, titles, direct confrontations—that the txuri-urdin These days they have not stopped listening to the hackneyed biblical myth of David against Goliath, the story in which the little one knocks down the powerful. The numbers show an overwhelming dominance for the Catalans: they have defeated their current rival in La Romareda (Zaragoza) in both matches this season with a score of 10-1 and they have not lost against them for more than a decade (26 wins and four draws since 2011). Barcelona is a vintage team – the first from Spain to triumph in Europe with players like Aitana Bonmatí and Alexia Putellas, world icons recognized with the highest individual awards – that is seeking this afternoon its third title of the season after winning the Super Cup and the League. If it wins, the club even has the possibility of achieving a historic poker in the Champions League final against Lyon for the first time next Saturday to close a perfect year.
In front of Barça and its dizzying records is Real, coached by Natalia Arroyo, a good friend of the Barça coach, Jonatan Giráldez, who has always tried to complicate matches with unexpected tactical modifications. “We know each other very well, we are similar teams and they are better than at the beginning of the season. La Real has always made things difficult for us, even though they have never beaten us. Natalia usually does something different [contra nosotras]and with something it will surprise,” warns Patri Guijarro.
Arroyo, who shares a friendship but also a taste for association football with Giráldez, arrived at the entity in May 2020, a year after the club won its only national title, the Cup, against Atlético. Only three of that team remain. soccer players: Nerea Eizagirre, who is now the captain, Ana Etxezarreta and Elena Lete. “It is always torture how to plan a match against Barça. I have tried different things, with different structures, sometimes more aggressive and sometimes protecting ourselves more. We will try to be ourselves and apply some of the things with which we have hurt them, but this Barça has almost always resolved all scenarios with victory,” Arroyo acknowledges.
Barça’s record is much longer than Real’s: they have four Super Cups, nine Cups, nine Leagues – more than anyone else in the three national competitions – and two Champions Leagues. Its undisputed hegemony in Spain began after the club decided a decade ago to professionalize the women’s sections. Since 2020, they have won all the league titles and all the Queen’s Cups except for last year, when the Barça team was disqualified in the round of 16 due to improper alignment against Osasuna. “We may be favorites, but it is a final. He is a great rival, who likes to have the ball, like us. In other games they have made things difficult for us,” insists Marta Torrejón, who has been a Barça player for ten years.
On their cup journey to La Romareda, Barça knocked down Albacete, Sevilla and Athletic with 19 goals for and only one against. La Real, which has only won two of its last ten games, defeated Sporting de Huelva, Levante and Atlético with nine goals scored and four conceded. In none of the previous matches of the tournament was there VAR, which will finally work again this Saturday for the second time in the history of the Queen’s Cup—the competition started in 1983—in a match in which Real, the candidate, Challenge a colossus. “We have analyzed everything we can and we have tried to select the best situations to try to do something, if we have options, which is very, very difficult,” admits Natalia Arroyo.
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