Interview with Salma Paralleluelo: “I couldn’t give everything because of the pain. I had to stop ‘

Athletics has live coverage of the Germany’s semi-final against Spain at the female UEFA 2025 euros.

When Salma Paralleulo returned from the Olympic Games last summer, she knew that something had to change.

The winger had played football constantly since abandoning a promising career in athletics in 2022 to reach Barcelona, but the pain became too much and his body had trouble dealing with adaptation to the different requirements of sport.

“It’s hard to stop playing but I had reached a point where I just had to accept it,” says parallelo Athletics. “I saw that (continue) was not going to do me good. I was not going to be able to perform or have fun on the ground.

“It’s overwhelming to see your teammates play without you, to be far from the group, but I knew that was what I had to do at that time.”

The Barcelona striker, now aged 21, has taken four months and is now back in Full Fitness, appearing in his second major tournament with Spain.

This is the story of the reason why she crossed the unconventional measure to stop playing preventively, and how she bounced just in time to help Spain in Euro 2025.

When Paralluelo had the chance to join Barcelona in the summer of 2022, she was forced to choose between the two sports in which she had contributed in all her youth: football and athletics. Until then, she had played for Villarreal, which allowed her to combine the two passions. But when the Catalan club came to call, she chose football.

Even before there, his abilities had put him under the spotlight, despite not yet playing for a Barça caliber club. She was one of the first Spanish women’s football players to generate a major media threw long before she was 18 years old. Her athletic physique, her speed and dribble capacity made her a catchy perspective, and the one that many teams wanted to sign.

Although parallelulo can play as a center-forward or on the right, its natural habitat is on the left wing.

During the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, she won the Tournament Prize for the best young player. She was only 19 years old but was crucial for Spain. She marked a winner of the 1111th minute against the Netherlands in the quarter-final, then gave her team an advance of 81st minute against Sweden in the semi-finals. She then started the final in Sydney, where Spain beat the European champions by reigning England to ensure their first female world cup.

If it was a summer of joy, 2024 was a disappointment. The Spanish women went to their first Olympic football tournament with great expectations, but left empty-handed after losing against Brazil in the semi-finals, then in Germany in the bronze medal match. In addition to all that, the paralelulo’s body told him that it was enough.

To understand her pain, we have to return to the time when she was still playing for Villarreal and training and competition in athletics. She then underwent one of the worst injuries that a footballer could feel.

“In 2021, I injured my LCA (anterior cross ligament),” she said during an interview in Lausanne, where Spain installed a camp for Euro 2025. “After having finally returned to play, I could feel a slight discomfort in my ballot, but I did not pay much attention at the time. At the time. And that became more and more limiting.

“Playing through the pain only worsened things, and I was at high risk of injury. I couldn’t give everything because of the pain.

“It was then that I decided to stop. Other players had told me how serious it was, that I should have stopped earlier. But because of my youth, because I didn’t want to miss nice things like the Champions League and the World Cup, I decided to continue playing.”

When she made the decision, she found the support of her club. Barça gave her everything she needed to recover without rushing.

“They did not put pressure on me and helped me realize that I was doing the right thing, that I would recover and that I would have a better future,” she adds.

“I learned that sometimes you have to put yourself first, tackle things reasonably and think about the future, not just what you have in the present. The important thing is to feel comfortable in the field and to be in good long -term health, rather than doing everything you can be on the ground.”

As she returned to Barça in mid-December, the pain she had been feeling for so long had completely disappeared.

“Before, I trained so much pain that I was avoiding making certain movements. I was thinking of what to avoid doing, it would not hurt, instead of just thinking of playing football. Now I’m much less pain. “

One of the parallelulo forces is his speed and explosive game, something that the injury prevented him from exploiting.

“It was frustrating to go out on the field and not play as well as I wanted. You can have good games and good spells, but it was something that I didn’t really appreciate. I was limited.”

Paralluelo spent his whole life preparing for a sport that is played for 90 minutes, football and another to contribute to its best for 40 seconds, athletics.

She participated in athletics at a high level. His coach Felix Lagunas said Athletics In 2023, that “if she had chosen athletics and the injuries had respected her, she would certainly have found herself in an athletics final at the Olympic Games”.

“You will have heard of Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who broke the world record in the hedges of 400 meters. Or Allyson Felix, who dominated the 200m and 400m during his time. Well, Salma-at his age, without training-made moments better than both,” he said.

When she stopped training in athletics, she realized that she had to readjust the daily routine she had followed for years. She also had to get used to the life of a sport that played such a important role for so long. “At first, I really missed the athlete part of me,” she said. “It’s about adapting to football, changing your state of mind. In the end, I had to give 100% to a sport. I had to forget athletics. “

The adjustment of his training was a progressive process.

“In the end, the competition requires a lot of you, but with the staff, myself and the physical coaches, we made this adjustment,” she said.

“I came from training (football) two days a week and the other days, I was doing athletics, then I went to train every day with a team as demanding as Barça, and I suffered from these changes.”

Despite his young age, his file is enviable. With Spain, she won all the World Cups in which she played: those under 17 (2018), those under 20 (2022) and the senior (2023), as well as the League of Nations in 2024. With Barca, she already has two titles of the Champions League (2022-23 and 2023-24), three Liga F titles, two COPA titles of La Reina and Two supercopas of Espana.

Now she is fortunate to raise one of the few football trophies that she has not yet won: the European Senior Championship (she won the title of under 17s in 2018).

“I had experienced things from a very young age that you cannot really imagine living so early,” she said. “But you are thinking of continuing, ambition and motivation to repeat something. It is also a stimulus for all of us ashletes, and even more in this team, and you can say that we always have the European championship and the Olympic Games to wait as a group. But in the end, which counts each year is the competition you have.

In this tournament, she only started against Italy, but her ability to break the wings made her an interesting player for head coach Montse Tome in Wednesday against Germany in Zurich. Volume only reveals his team to players on the day of the game.

“The work of all players is to be ready whenever it is time to fight,” says parallelulo.

Does it see itself in the final?

“Not yet,” she replies. “First of all, Germany.”

(Top Photo: Gerrit Van Keulen / Getty Images)