Keira Walsh, Lucy Bronze, Aitana Bonmati and Alexia Putellas are teammates who will turn into rivals when they take the field in the Women’s World Cup final in Sydney on Sunday.
All four of them play for Barcelona in club football. But while Walsh and Bronze will try to earn England’s Lionesses their first world title, Spain’s Bonmati and Putellas will do everything they can to stop them.
“I think it will be a bit weird at first,” Walsh said in an interaction with fifa.com.
Walsh and Bronze helped the Catalan giants dominate the Spanish domestic scene and conquer Europe in 2022/23.
“We said we’d hopefully see each other in the final, but I didn’t expect it to happen,” said Walsh, who joined Barcelona last year. “I’m buzzing. We’ve messaged before each game at the World Cup saying ‘good luck’, but maybe we won’t on Sunday!”
Walsh was lavish in her praise for ‘friend’ Bonmati, but also added that friendship will not come in the way of their rivalry on Sunday. “Aitana is a great player,” said Walsh. “Those are the people you want to be playing against. I face her in training every day and that raises my level. She’s actually a very good friend but I know once we cross the white line, it will be competitive.”
Lionesses’ defender Bronze, too, agreed about Spain’s quality, but is also confident of exploiting their weaknesses.
“Spain have got the best technical players in the world in my opinion,” Bronze said. “They’ve been unbelievable in this tournament and they’ve dominated most games in possession.
“They’ve got their strengths, but they’ve also got their weaknesses. We watched their game against Japan (when Spain were beaten 0-4), so they have suffered quite a heavy defeat in this World Cup already. That’s something we can look at.
“They like to feel in control of the game with possession, but we’re a team that can possess the ball or be comfortable without it. We showed against Australia that we’re really good on the break. We can build goals, score from set-pieces and from counter-attacks.
“A lot of the goals Spain have conceded have been on the counter. That seems to be their vulnerability — and it’s one of our strengths,” Bronze summed up.
