Alexia Putellas Becomes FC Barcelona Femení’s All-Time Leading Goalscorer
The reigning Ballon D’Or winner Alexia Putellas has scored her 182nd goal for FC Barcelona to become the club’s all-time leading goalscorer for the club ahead of her former team-mate Jenni Hermoso.
Alexia struck in the 51st minute of Barcelona’s game away to Atlético Madrid to move ahead of Jenni who scored 181 goals for the club in two spells between 2013 and 2017 and then again from 2019 to 2022.
Hermoso had held the record since December 5, 2020, when the third of her four goals against Santa Teresa CD took her past the former highest scorer, Sonia Bermúdez on 124 goals. She went to score another 57 for the club over the next 18 months including 51 goals in the calendar year of 2021 which made her the leading female goalscorer in the world that year.
Alexia had equalled Hermoso’s record with her goal last week against Real Zaragoza, a match in which she was also presented with a special shirt to mark her 400th appearance for the club a few weeks earlier.
In a tight game away to the last domestic champions before the Catalan club, Atlético de Madrid, Alexia broke the deadlock sliding home a cross by Patri Guijarro to score her 131st league goal for the club since 2013. In addition to those, she has scored 20 goals in the Copa de la Reina, 19 in the Champions League, 4 in the Spanish Super Cup and 8 in the Catalan Cup. Those goals have come in 404 official appearances for FC Barcelona.
Already the leading appearance-maker for her country with 111 international caps, Alexia may yet also hold that honor for her club side. She is currently 113 games behind another former team-mate, Melanie Serrano, who played for the club for 15 seasons.
Only five male players have ever scored more for FC Barcelona than Alexia and Jenni, all icons of the club – Josep Samitier (184), László Kubala (194), Luis Suárez (198), César Rodríguez (232) and the incomparable Lionel Messi, way ahead on 672 goals in 778 games.
Alexia, who has been voted The Best Women’s Player of the Year in 2021 and 2022 and the first-two winner of the women’s Ballon D’Or in the same years, had missed the majority of the previous club season after suffering a rupture to her anterior cruciate ligament on the very eve of last summer’s UEFA Women’s Euro, an injury which ruled her out of that tournament at the peak of her powers.
Although she recovered in time to play a part at the end of the club season and Spain’s victorious FIFA Women’s World Cup campaign, her supremacy in both teams has been threatened in her absence. She did not start either the UEFA Women’s Champions League final or World Cup final.
Her title of UEFA Women’s Player of the Year was claimed in August by her midfield team-mate Aitana Bonmatí, also the recipient of the Women’s World Cup Golden Ball, awarded to the tournament’s best player. Aitana is widely expected to succeed Alexia as the next winner of the Ballon D’Or and The Best FIFA Women’s Player before the end of the year.
Nonetheless, Alexia has now been restored to the FC Barcelona starting eleven this season, pushed further forward in the ‘false-9’ position previously occupied by Jenni Hermoso. After missing a penalty away to Sporting Huelva, she has now scored goals in three successive league games and is set to become the first woman to score 200 goals for the club before the season is out.
