Caldentey grew up in the small town of Felanitx, on the island of Mallorca.<\/p>\n
She was close to her older brother and her cousins and they played football together at her grandmother’s house as a child.<\/p>\n
At the age of four, Caldentey joined the local football team – an after-school futsal club in Manacor. <\/p>\n
She was the only girl on the team but enjoyed huge success, winning multiple titles, including the Spanish Futsal Championships.<\/p>\n
“Football was always around me because of my family,” Caldentey told BBC Sport. <\/p>\n
“My older brother played, my dad was a coach – he was the president of a club [CE Felanitx] and played before that – and my grandfather and cousins played as well. <\/p>\n
“I grew up in that environment and nobody told me it was just for men. I always felt supported. I was lucky.<\/p>\n
“[Futsal was] how I started. That’s quite typical in Spain when you are a kid. I started to combine 11-a-side with five-a-side because I loved it so much. I did both for years.”<\/p>\n
When Caldentey’s talents became clear at the age of 14, she joined a professional women’s team – El Collerense – who played in the Spanish first division.<\/p>\n
In her second training session, she suffered an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury and almost considered quitting – a moment she often looks back on now.<\/p>\n
But a year later, she made her debut in the Copa de la Reina and soon caught the eye of Spain’s most prestigious clubs.<\/p>\n
Like many in Spain, she shared a deep love for Barcelona but they did not develop a professional women’s section until 2015.<\/p>\n
It meant she missed out on an education at La Masia – Barcelona’s youth academy – but Barcelona was in her blood and after graduating from university with a masters degree in injury rehabilitation, she joined the club in the summer of 2014.<\/p>\n
“When I was playing in my town it was easy but when I got older my parents had to drive me one hour from home,” said Caldentey.<\/p>\n
“Collerense were my first women’s team. I didn’t have the licence to drive and the club couldn’t offer me a driver, so my family had to support me with training.<\/p>\n
“We trained at 8pm so arrived home at 11pm. In the moment you didn’t realise but now when I think about it, I was so lucky that my family supported me with no reward. I loved what I did and they supported me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caldentey grew up in the small town of Felanitx, on the island of Mallorca. She was close to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2000,299,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-369173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115082448320210266","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}