10 things you should know about world's best female footballer Aitana Bonmati

Today marks world best female footballer Aitana Bonmati's 26th birthday, here are 10 things you should know about her

When you're a kid growing up in Catalonia, the Pep Years belong to legend. Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Messi.… You know the team, no?

I remember watching the games from a bar in Sant Pere de Ribes, the town where I grew up, a 40-minute drive from Barcelona. (Travel info: It's next to Sitges. If you ever go, call it “Ribes.” To us locals that's very important, hahaha.) I would zoom in on Xavi and Iniesta: How they moved, how they created chances, how they scanned the space around them before receiving the ball. Iniesta was always driving the ball forward, so I tried to do that. Today I feel I have the same way of understanding the game. The Barça Way, if you want to call it that.

I still follow Pep, wherever he works, because I love his football. When he wins, I am happy — except if it is against Barça :-D

I saw zero opportunities.

Everybody dreams about playing at the Camp Nou. I went there when I was 14, and I remember it feeling so big. You look up at the 90,000 people, and you feel almost dizzy. But when I say that everybody dreams about playing there, I'm talking about the boys.

You think girls thought about it? Pffffft. No chance. Not this one, anyway.

Back then Barça Femení were not on TV. They were not on social media. There was definitely no chance of women playing at the Camp Nou. For a long time, the best female teams in Spain were not professional, either.

So when I was playing for the Barça U15s, I couldn't see a way of making a living off football here. I didn't know much about women's football elsewhere in Europe, like England or Spain or Germany, but people spoke a lot about the U.S. You could study