Alexandra Popp, one of the great dangers for the women’s Barça

2023-06-01 18:00:02

BarcelonaIf you ever feel like talking to Alexandra Popp (Witten, Germany, 1992) you’ll probably find her at Tierpark Essehof, a zoo in the south of Wolfsburg. There he enjoys his great passion beyond football: taking care of animals. In fact, the captain of Wolfsburg and the German national team studied for years to obtain a degree that would allow her to carry out this task professionally. Popp’s vocation is so great that he even visits zoos in other countries where football takes him. This is what he did, for example, during the European Championship played in England last summer. The 32-year-old forward is clear that, when she hangs up her boots, her professional future will be linked to the care of animals.

But if Popp is known for anything, it is for being one of the most decisive European footballers and for having a strong character that leads her to say what she thinks without hesitation. The last major public criticism of the soccer player born in Witten, a town on the outskirts of Dortmund where her father had a butcher shop, was by the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino. He did so after Infantino complained that world football’s top body was not receiving hefty offers from Europe for the television rights to the World Cup, which will be played from July in Australia and New Zealand.

“We have the impression that this is only a question of money and who is the most powerful in the world,” Popp recently told the German news agency SID. “A consensus must be found instead of passing the blame and letting greed do the talking,” he added. Last year the Wolfsburg footballer had already criticized her own club and the German federation for the conditions of the women’s Bundesliga. “Professionalization and infrastructures are sometimes a disaster. Something must be done,” he said in a magazine podcast Kicker in which he also complained about the fact that the wages of the men’s Wolfsburg squad are significantly higher than the women’s.

The seventh final of the Champions League

“Thanks to players like Popp, Wolfsburg will never give up in the final regardless of the result,” Lluís Cortés, the coach of Barça’s first Champions League, told ARA. The Lleida native faced off as a forward coach in the semifinals of the 2019-2020 European competition. Then, the German team eliminated the Catalan. “This will be Popp’s seventh Champions League final, an experience she brings to her team,” says Cortés. He played five of them with Wolfsburg, the team he joined in 2012 from Duisburg, with which he lifted the trophy in 2009 (against Zvezda). He won the first two with Wolfsburg, in 2013 (Olympic de Lyon) and 2014 (Tyreso). The following three, in 2016, 2018 and 2020, he lost against Lyon.

Cortés points out that a fact that can condition Popp mentally in this Saturday’s final against Barça in Eindhoven is “the expulsion he suffered in the 2018 against Lyon in Kyiv”. The forward saw her second yellow card in the 96th minute of extra time as Wolfsburg won 1-0 with a goal from Pernille Harder. The Germans would end up losing by 1-4. “That expulsion can be in the subconscious during the match”, says the ex-Blaugrana.

Popp has scored in three of the six Champions League finals he has played in. “He is very dangerous when the ball is set,” warns Cortés. You don’t have to go far to find an example of his abilities in this facet. A header from a corner in the second leg of this season’s semi-finals against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium put Wolfsburg ahead in the tie. “In addition, she is a very aggressive player who can make it difficult for Barça to get the ball out,” the current Ukraine coach continues to analyze. The Barcelona team wants to prevent the Veldhoven zoo, west of Eindhoven, from celebrating on Saturday.