Chapter Text
Barcelona signs a Brazilian.
Nothing fancy, nothing remarkable. A short loan from Levante, some wonderkid. Will play for Barça B in the pre-season and get a shot at the main team.
Alexia Putellas is... uninterested. Which sounds unkind. She makes a point to care about every Barça player; she's their captain. But... this is her after injury. After so much pressure and expectations and... just so much.
She lets Aitana, Mapí and Paredes answer instead. The kids in the group Team Chat are excited as they always are when there's someone new. Alexia wonders when she started thinking about herself as one of the 'old ones' -- she hasn't been a kid in a long time.
She needs to focus, that's what she tells herself. Her family, her girlfriend, her physio and staff, fuck even her nutri, tell her she needs to relax.
Alexia will rest when she's back at the top. Maybe.
She silences the group chat. Brazilian forgotten.
You don't know how the fuck you got to Barcelona. It's okay, you think, you didn't know how the fuck you got to Levante, in València, either.
Suddenly, that's just how your life is now.
You try to think of yourself as one of the lucky ones, especially when you are alone, having a hard time with the language, a hard time with the people. I'm lucky, you tell yourself, I have to believe that.
You remember the girls you played with in the projects back in Rio. Wide-eyed, borrowed cleats, all of them, and you too -- one of them, at the time. Playing in fields that were more dirt and gravel than grass. Playing in courts with leaks, that filled up with water when it rained too much; it always rains too much in Rio, a flood.
You knew what you were doing back then. Dreaming big, working twice as hard, a clear goal in yellow and green -- play for Brazil. Even then, you were lucky, lucky to have a mother who cared, a grandfather who found you a team to play in, lucky to have a baby brother you had to be better for.
You got a team to play, black and red stripes you learned to love. Played so much, played the best that you could (you were lucky, to get a team that was investing in the youth program).
You were barely 17 when you got lucky again, at the beach of all places.
Sunny day with your friends, a rare moment of freedom. Of no discipline. Even then, football found you, it always did -- it was the driving force of everything in your life.
You played altinha with a bunch of kids you just met, loud boys, and you humbled them just because. Juggling the ball with ease, throwing it over one then two then three. They went crazy, loud kids -- gringo kids, blonde, bright. Their mother took an interest in you, Camila Lozardo.
Camila was married to an important football agent, and she was trying her hand at being a Sports Agent as well, bored out of her mind back in Madrid, Spain. Brazilian married to a Spaniard, eager to prove she was good at something other than organizing kids’ lunchboxes.
It was fate, probably, or maybe not, because she would eventually visit your team’s academy anyway.
But what happened was that you met her at the beach, and she got interested, and suddenly you had an agent. Too good of an agent. "You have to go to Spain," she said, "up your game, train in a harder league, get you to England eventually. Don’t you want to play in England?That’s where the game is being played.”
You were happy to kick a ball at a drywall, once.
The first offer to go overseas came early, too early. And you were so afraid. And you wanted to say no, why should I leave my family? My mother who works so hard, my grandpa who’s old, my brother who is young. Why should I?
In the end you said yes for the same reasons you wanted to say no. Because your mother worked so hard and yet sometimes you guys still struggled with the bills, because your grandfather was old and couldn't retire yet, because your brother was young and dreamed of being a baller as well -- not because he liked it, but because being a baller could change his life.
"You will get paid, actual euros," Camila said through your phone, your camera showing her your family’s humble 3-bedroom apartment. A room you shared. A place that was home.
"Yes, I will go," you said.
What could a kid say? What could a kid do?
Before Barcelona there was Levante and it was good for you, in a way. The team was hard-working, tight-knit, an old team used to playing long seasons together.
Spanish is harder to speak than you thought, especially when everyone talks too fast for you to follow. Levante is not the kind of team that offers Spanish lessons to new players. Camila takes care of you though, more than she should, again; gets you a teacher that you have to see every week.
But it's not just language. Nobody told you how hard it was, all of it, another country, another city, a different culture, different people, tastes, smells, sounds. València has a beach, which is not the same, but you're grateful for it anyway -- you don't know how to exist away from the beach, never have.
Football is not the same as well: they think you are undisciplined, rebellious, too bold. You learn other styles, other plays, you don't compromise yourself though -- they shouldn’t have signed a Brazilian if that was the case.
You try though, you try harder. Work harder. Give 110%. You know you can't waste this opportunity when you finally manage to send a new videogame to your brother, a birthday gift; a shiny new thing that you two could only see behind glass displays. He cries on the phone and you decide that you will endure whatever you have to endure.
You spend the whole year without going home. You have a hell of a season, low exposure sure, the team doesn’t get much media, but you don’t mind; you aren’t in it for the fame. You save money, train, dedicate. You get a call for Brazil’s U20, shine there too. You even get to meet girls who are playing in Spain as well, that you would only see in passing reference during games -- now, you get to call them friends.
You have your first Christmas ever away from your family, a sacred thing, Christmas is. Spend it with Camila’s family instead, another way in which she takes care of you differently.
Your mother calls you anyway, at night, makes your brother hold the phone on video call like it’s a sacred task. Makes you yell over music and conversations to talk to, what you think, is the whole neighborhood piled inside your childhood apartment. Everyone wants to say congratulations, everyone has questions. You are not even there and you are exhausted.
At some point, your brother takes you to the room you used to share. It is still the same, he tells you proudly, "I kept it just like you left it.”
The bunk bed is pushed to the corner, the two beds made. The small table still looks like it will topple over with all the mess -- two chairs almost touching to fit. You remember elbowing your brother there, trying to do your homework while he pestered you -- it almost makes you choke now, the nostalgia of it.
The lonely shelf where you two used to fight to put the smallest of trinkets is filled up with your trophies, your medals -- your baby brother stopped complaining about it when you started to win so much. He idolizes you, another responsibility on top of the pile you already carry around.
This room, this shrine, it haunts you now. You know that if you ever go back you have failed, cannot go back, simply won’t.
"When will you come back?" your brother asks, turning the phone to his face, a little skewed. He is losing his baby fat, his cheeks hollower now, his eyebrows fuller. He does not look like you, darker, a different father -- no less your brother for it, never. You feel like you are missing parts of him though, it hurts so much that you have to look away.
"Take me back so I can say bye to mom," you say instead, distracting him, giving him something to do. You are not ready to come back yet, not trusting yourself to see all you left behind and not want to stay.
You say your goodbyes and find yourself playing a thousand games with Camila’s boys, trying to compensate for something a thousand miles away. Eventually you go into the kitchen, insist on helping with the dishes while her Spaniard husband puts the kids to bed.
She waves you off, says she likes to do it by hand just by habit, that she has a dishwasher that can probably fit a car inside of it.
A dishwasher. The novelty of it. You decide that’s the next thing you are buying your mom, no more fights about who will wash the dishes in that house.
You help out speaking quietly, shoulder to shoulder, Portuguese words flowing between you two. Camila is not tall, not as tall as you at least. Dark hair, sharp features, commanding, does not need to raise her voice to impose respect. Does not look her age.
"They are a handful, those boys..." she says, fondly, looking over her shoulder to the living room where they were. "They remind me of my brother..." you say, shrugging. Because they do in a way, boys are boys anywhere they are.
"No talent for football, though. But the exercise is good for them, at least, so I let it be. So hard to get them away from that stupid piece of plastic." Camila continues, talking mostly to the sink now. You have a sense this is going somewhere, but only nod along.
"My girl, though, the girl we had, she might have been good at it someday..." she completes, frowning at her soap-filled hands like they had done something to offend her.
A girl, of course there was a girl. Would you even be here in this apartment if there hadn’t been a girl? You saw pictures at the entrance, lots of phases and hallmarks for the boys. But two or three pictures of a girl stilled in time, four years old you would think -- never to grow old. She has a ball under her little arms, a jersey with 13 on her chest.
"I'm sorry," you say because it’s the only thing you can think to say. What anyone can say truly.
Camila says "me too." And you don't talk about it anymore.
You decide you are going to wear the 13 someday, make it lucky like you are lucky. Make it mean bad luck to someone else.
You grow a lot, that year in Levante, more than you will ever know.
Nobody thinks to tell you that people do not speak Spanish in Barcelona.
You take some time to notice it too. The way words are written weirdly, the spelling jumbling your mind. How every time you would ask something to someone they would pause before answering, switching gears inside their heads.
"It’s Catalan," Camila says over the phone, she’s munching on something, always eating in a rush, meeting to meeting. "It sounds like Portuguese, Spanish and French had a child.”
"That sounds horrible," you say, feeling sick. Another language to not be understood in.
"You will pick it up easily, Barça will help you out. Don’t worry." She continues, ignoring your tone. Straight to business when she has to. "How are you liking your new place? Have you explored the city yet?”
You hum on the phone. You are at your bare Barça-issued apartment. A building close to the Ciudad Sportiva, where you will train and eat and live for the next year. You were supposed to share it but no one on the Barça B was from out of the city this year; Catalans through and through.
Camila had sent you sooner to the city, two weeks before the actual beginning of the pre-season so you had time to adapt, learn the bus routes, explore Barcelona before getting sequestered into the insane routine of a footballer - a peek at normalcy.
"Don’t get stuck with yourself again, learn the city, learn the space, go out okay?" Camila commands from Madrid and hangs up. You sigh.
Back in Levante you had been... shy. To go out, to find places you liked, too afraid and too focused to do anything besides football. You were 19 now, would turn 20 soon, would not spend another year looking at walls or inside of the gym.
You spend the next two weeks looking for your community. Brazilians are like pigeons, your grandpa says, they are everywhere. Adaptable.
You find a bar that plays samba, a store that sells something similar to pastel, you go to the beach, scorching hot, and tan. You find a coffee place you don’t detest, you find a park that you enjoy. You find places you can hide for a while. This year will be better, you say.
You get the impression the Barça B girls do not like you. You understand, your situation is...special. Barça B is a development team, not supposed to receive loans; your potential at your age made this the best arrangement though.
You introduce yourself, make the rounds, say your rehearsed phrase: "Soy brasileña, de Río. Sí, de Río de Janeiro.”
Rio, Rio, Rio. That’s your nickname before the end of the first day. Rio.
You don’t know how to make these girls like you besides not playing well, and that you can’t do. So you do the opposite. It’s fitness test day: short runs, jump tests, lift tests; overall fitness profile. You do the same you did at Levante.
You destroy the test. Absolutely crush it. Break all records, win on every station.
Give them something to truly hate about you.
On the second week of pre-season, you meet the senior team. A part of them, actually.
They do that sometimes, the staff of Barça B, it’s a good way to keep the youngest with their goal in mind, dangle the carrot in front of them so to speak. You don’t feel exactly anxious but you are not indifferent to it either -- it’s another way to prove yourself, you think. Another opportunity.
The team is done with most of the morning practice when they arrive, four of them, like gods among mortals. You know their names, of course, have studied the territory where you are stepping; they sent down the 'heavy names', you can tell.
Mapí León is tall, blonde, all smiles, broad shoulders. Classical center-back. She seems the easiest to talk to, approachable.
Aitana Bonmatí, shorter than you expected, shorter than you. Technical brilliance in a small package. Small face, big presence. She frowns, you know she is evaluating everyone on the field and finding them lacking.
Salma, who recently reached the main team, is here to break the ice, to make the dream seem possible. Tall, shiny skin, pretty smile. You stand a little apart from everyone else but you feel like you would want to be close to her, maybe.
And then of course, every kingdom has its Queen. La Reina. You take offense at that alias, football already has a queen, she’s Brazilian don’t you know? You swallow your pride, though, because here she’s clearly the ruler.
Alexia is the last to enter the field, talking with your manager. You have seen the pictures, have seen the videos, but the real thing is... brighter, somehow. Prettier, too. Whisky-colored eyes, almost golden, who even has eyes like that?
You notice her knee wrapped tight, a black thing. Oh, the worst injury a player can have. She survived it, larger than life once again. Maybe a true queen.
Alexia is not in the mood to deal with the kids now. Tired from training, frustrated. She’s having a hard time adjusting; cleared by the medical team to go back to the pitch but not cleared by her mind. She will die before admitting she’s afraid of stepping too hard and hurting herself again, of a shove that would break down her fragile knee.
She takes a deep breath and comes down anyway. Has to set an example to them, these hopeful youths, even if she herself doesn’t feel exactly awe-inspiring right now. Smiles tightly at the eager faces under the sun, flushed youth.
Notices one of the girls standing slightly apart, nothing glaring, just... a body language, leaning afar, hands behind her back. Stands tall, looks leaner than the rest, sleeves of the blaugrana shirt rolled up to her shoulders. The brazilian, perhaps?
Alexia just moves on, unbothered. Will do what she has to do and move on. She needs to get her shit together.
She moves through the stations, exercise after exercise. The girls look at her with big, wide eyes. She smiles blandly back, nods at questions, gives away tips she herself can’t seem to execute - nobody notices, nobody questions a queen.
She gets to the 1v1 run, go right or left, protect the ball and shake off the marker. Does it easily enough, runs shoulder to shoulder with bodies that are too afraid to push her - secretly, she’s grateful. Does it once, twice, third time there’s a pause.
The Brazilian is standing there, last in line, foot over the ball, hair pulled back in a short ponytail. Alexia hadn’t talked to her yet, only nodded, gestured. She keeps it that way, receives the ball and off they go.
Alexia gets well into a jog before she gets a shove. Hard shove. The Brazilian pressing hard to her side, almost at her height, testing her balance and then bumping again, foot closing on the door.
On instinct, Alexia cuts hard to the right, presses her shoulder back -- classic midfield feint, making the opposing girl stumble. La Reina slows down, tapping her knee for injury; nothing, of course. She releases a breath she didn’t know she was holding.
The Brazilian girl got up, eyes focused on the ball. She seemed to think hard for a moment before pointing at the ball under Alexia's foot.
"Va, tornem-hi." Catalan, the girl said, voice stilted, accent heavy, like she wasn't used to it. "Again." she repeated in Spanish.
Alexia raised her eyebrows, unsure how to respond. There wasn’t anyone in the lineup for this exercise yet, so there shouldn’t be any problem. The thing was, the girl had been... intense, not holding back. Alexia hadn’t even thought before applying pressure on her knee, had to do it to keep upright. Maybe…
They went at it again: sprint, hard shove. The girl was smarter this time, tried to take the bite sooner, relying on speed since Alexia was clearly stronger. Again, sensing the impending crash, she hit the brakes, protecting the ball with her leg this time, the injured leg. She hesitated a moment too long and rotated her body; protecting her knee, using a move she shouldn’t use against such a young player.
The Brazilian crashed directly into her shoulder and fell back hard, rolling quickly though, catching her breath. Her eyes still on the ball.
"Are you ok?" Alexia asked, worried she had come off too strong. A thrill ran through her, undoubtedly, another twist she had been hesitating to do all week, done again... but this girl was reckless, throwing herself like that. They should stop before…
"De nou, ho fem de nou." Again, let’s go again. Catalan, terrible catalan but catalan nonetheless. Alexia looked over her shoulder, some girls already lined up to get their shot. She shook her head, two attempts were good enough.
The girl just grabbed the ball and made her way back to the starting line, getting in position. Some other teammate whispered something to her but she shrugged, looking directly at Alexia.
Intense eyes, dark, hair brushed back with wisps of grass. Young and defiant.
Alexia sighed, these young players…
She made her way back to the starting line, threw a tight-lipped smile to the other girls and got into position. The assistant supervising the station blew the whistle one more time.
They rushed forward, sprinting hard. Shoulder to shoulder, run and run, and when Alexia was ready to shove and win the race: a tackle.
Precise, sideways. Pure ball hit. Alexia could only jump over it, trusting her knee not to give out from under her -- it didn’t, again. She stumbled a bit forward but turned quickly, rage filling her. What the fuck was that?
She wasn’t quick enough to get to the Brazilian before the assistant was already yelling at the girl, whistle loud, a loud man called Ove.
"That was not the drill, Rio, for fuck’s sake, every time..." He got to the girl, pulling on her training bib hard. The girl raised her hands, unapologetic, gesturing to the ball rolling through the field.
"I only hit ball." The girl - Rio, was it? What kind of name is Rio? - muttered in rough Spanish, eyes pleading with Alexia to say something.
The assistant just pushed her to another station, muttering a low "Sorry, Miss Putellas." over his shoulder.
Alexia felt the rage drain from her, fists unclenching. She had jumped. She hadn’t thought about her knee once.
Suddenly, Alexia Putellas wasn’t uninterested anymore.