These could have been the second Games for Salma Paralluelo (Zaragoza; 20 years old) and, above all, in two sports as different as football and athletics. A feat that prevented an injury. A torn cruciate ligament in her left knee in April 2021 during a match forced her out of Tokyo when everything pointed to her being able to compete in the mixed 4×400 relay. At that time, she had not yet decided between mom and dad, between the ball and the tartan. “Yes, they could have been,” she admits laconically and with a half-smile of sadness. This Tuesday (9:00 p.m., TVE and Eurosport), against Brazil, she will seek the Olympic final as a forward for the national football team. From what could have been in Japan to what she is pursuing in France is everything that has changed in the sporting life of this player in the last three years.
“Athletics has helped me a lot in football,” says the Barça player. “Physically, in terms of coordination and mentality. A large part of what I am is due to athletics. Then the running technique has nothing to do with it. On the track, the centre of gravity is very high and in football, the opposite, because the ball goes low, you have to turn… But when there is space, on the long field, I can use more technique.” [de atletismo]”, Explain.
Two different universes, he adds, also when it comes to preparing them. “Athletics is harder to train, more demanding on a physical level. The work plan is individualized. In that sense, it is more complicated. In football, you work on everything in a team context because that is what you play. Perhaps it could be more bearable in the sense that you work together, you have your role,” he points out. “But I have a hard time when we lose,” he points out.
Her athletics coach, Félix Laguna, who had had her since she was 14, always portrayed her as a talented athlete on the track. While the rest of the athletes accumulated eight to ten sessions per week, she barely did two. Even so, she achieved top marks. Her future in full-time athletics was left in question after she signed for Barcelona in 2022, which forced her to definitively give up speed and hurdles. In any case, her personal numbers (26 goals with the Blaugrana last year) and the collective successes in Montjuïc and with the national team (triple world crown in the under-17, under-20 and absolute categories) confirmed that, at least, she had not been completely wrong.
Paralluelo chose football to play it. “As a spectator, I am not crazy. I don’t usually watch it on television. Only the most entertaining or cool matches. If I have nothing to do, I can put it on, but it is not something I continue to do,” confesses this young woman, daughter of a Spanish father and an Equatorial Guinean mother.
As a former athlete, she likes to compete in large estates, but she has been unable to do much of that at the Games due to the increasing tendency of her rivals to dig in. “My potential is to go more into space, so these are not easy or comfortable matches for me. You can’t get into the game too much. You have to keep moving away even if the ball doesn’t reach you, also so that those movements benefit another teammate. Each one has to play her role. It’s about working hard, being patient and waiting for your chance,” says Paralluelo, who in the quarterfinal match against Colombia started as a centre forward and ended up as a left winger. “It was a novelty in the national team,” she says. From there, and with the match more lost than won, she conquered the baseline to assist Irene Paredes for the 2-2 in the 97th minute. “I don’t remember having suffered so much. They were very tough and in defence they endured everything,” she says about the Colombians.
The national team already beat Brazil (0-2) in the group stage and everyone is waiting for them in the Olympic final on Saturday 10th at the Parc des Princes in Paris. “This always happens in high performance. When you achieve something extraordinary, like the World Cup, expectations rise and so do ours. But we are aware that doing things like this is complicated. We may have the tools, but the other day we were able to go home. It is something exceptional to win competitions,” she stresses about the success of a team and a universe (football played by women) that, for many, has become a banner. “We are achieving incredible goals. I don’t think we should be given any label, but we work on values and on doing things better,” she stresses without wanting to go into too much depth on the subject.
Since the weekend, she has been keeping an eye on athletics in Saint-Denis, with an eye on one of her favourites, the American Sidney McLaughlin, Olympic champion in Tokyo in the 400m hurdles and the 4x400m, two of her events before settling on football.
In the days before deciding to play football and play for Barcelona, he spoke with his coach, Félix Laguna, about the possibility of doing only athletics until the 2028 Los Angeles Games and then switching to football, at the age of 25. It didn’t happen. He entered the field with no way back and this Tuesday he is looking for the Olympic final.
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