some jumbled thoughts below
people’s initial reactions to alexia’s announcement says everything about who they are as a fan and as a person btw
how anyone could ever be so toxic towards her about it blows my mind bc her reasonings for leaving are so clear and so understandable, and while i was initially annoyed about the timing, there would never be a right time to announce something like this. no matter when she told everyone, it was always going to overshadow everything else about the season
i don’t think people understand the significance of a decision like this for someone like her. if you watch her video again, the part of her saying ‘wednesday will be my final game for barcelona’ was obviously filmed at a different time than the rest of the vid, clearly because she couldn’t decide if she wanted to leave or not. to blame her for the timing is something equally unfair bc nobody but her will understand how hard of a decision it has been. she literally couldn’t decide until the very last moment and i’m sure upon the response to the video she’s probably still wondering if it’s the right thing
if she goes to lcl, i understand. it’s likely not gonna be a ucl team for at least one or two seasons, so she won’t play against barça. kang is evil, yes, but she’s most definitely offering alexia the world and after spending 14 years always doing what’s right for the club (esp when it was going through its various crises) it’s a wonder it took her this long to finally put herself first. she deserves the world and she deserves at this point to choose what it looks like for herself. a football career is finite and she’s always said she’ll disappear after retiring so if she is remotely doing it for the money (which it’s clear her main reason definitely is not money) then sue her. so what if she wants to secure her future after football.
most importantly of all, it seems she wants to spend at least a few playing years not under the unfortunate burden that her role has become, what with the pressure and the constant scapegoating people direct towards her whenever anything goes wrong, etc etc. moving to a mid table club where she probably won’t be captain and won’t be the leader of the team seems like the perfect recipe at this stage to enjoy football for what it is, for what it was when she first started playing.
i think the 2025 (club + international) season did her in and that’s what got the ball rolling and she just found more and more reasons to go in terms of reflecting, la masia kids stepping up, realising how exhausted she is, etc etc
all of this is so easy to understand, and it has been so easy to understand since the first watch of the video. the line ‘and i admit i have emptied myself’ says everything and it baffles me that people heard that and still chose to treat her with such vitriol. after everything she has done, she STILL thinks she’s indebted to barça. that also says it all.
anyway some jumbled thoughts but overall she is my idol, my goat, the player that made women’s football mean everything to adult me because of what younger me experienced with football, and her character on and off the pitch has never failed to prove that.
also i can never listen to magnolias again. and women’s football is about to go through a major period of change and i think it will be for the better
(^ not only bc of her leaving fyi, and do know i did cry this morning rewatching the video)
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