Barcelona and Spain star Aitana Bonmati on Monday gained her second successive ladies’s Ballon d’Or, after main her membership to a historic continental quadruple of titles and claiming the Nations League together with her nation.
The 26-year-old playmaker joins team-mate Alexia Putellas as the one ladies to win the Ballon d’Or twice, because the award’s inauguration in 2018.
“This can’t be achieved alone, I’m very fortunate to be surrounded by gamers who make me higher daily,” Bonmati mentioned after receiving the award.
“Because of the employees, to the membership staff, with out you we might not obtain a lot success.”
Already thought-about an all-time nice of the ladies’s recreation, Bonmati was the stand-out performer as Barcelona romped to a trophy-laden 2023/24 season.
The Catalans gained each trophy accessible to them final time period — the Spanish league, the Copa de la Reina, the Supercopa de Espana and a second-successive Girls’s Champions League.
Bonmati scored a aim and put in a player-of-the-match efficiency as Barcelona beat Lyon 2-0 within the closing of the Champions League to assert their third title in 4 seasons.
– ‘Proudest I’ve felt’ –
“It is the primary time we have crushed Lyon. I am pleased with the workforce, and we all know that with these followers we now have, we won’t fail,” Bonmati mentioned after the crowning second of her season, which was performed in entrance of 51,000 spectators in Bilbao’s San Mames stadium.
A product of Barcelona’s famed La Masia academy, the diminutive midfielder was additionally named participant of the season by UEFA for her six objectives and 6 assists throughout her aspect’s profitable European marketing campaign.
With eight objectives and 11 assists in Spain’s Liga F, Bonmati was equally influential in guiding Barcelona to a fifth-straight league title.
The 2023 World Cup winner added the inaugural Girls’s Nations League to her resume in February, when she scored Spain’s opener of their 2-0 win within the closing in opposition to France.
She was once more chosen by UEFA as the general participant of the finals for her performances and objectives within the semi-finals and closing.
Solely a shock defeat within the Olympics semi-final in opposition to Brazil prevented Bonmati from having the prospect to safe a exceptional six titles for membership and nation in a single season.
In April, Bonmati was named Sportswoman of the Yr on the Laureus Awards, changing into the primary footballer to take action, and was rewarded alongside together with her Spain team-mates for profitable the Girls’s World Cup in August 2023.
She additionally obtained reward for serving to to fight sexism within the Spanish soccer federation by protesting together with her team-mates after disgraced former president Luis Rubiales forcibly kissed participant Jenni Hermoso.
“She’s a task mannequin of a participant. How she trains, her angle, the way in which she approaches issues daily, she simply units an amazing instance,” then-Barcelona coach Jonatan Giraldez mentioned of his star asset in Might.
“We met when she was beginning out her profession. I’ve watched her develop up, undergo the entire course of. I am happy to have seen every thing that is occurred (to her), and he or she deserves all of it.”
The ladies’s Ballon d’Or is chosen from a shortlist of 30 gamers by a voting panel of fifty worldwide soccer journalists.
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