Still basking in the glory of clinching the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup 2026™ title with Arsenal after a frenetic final against Corinthians, Mariona Caldentey will turn 30 shortly after La Roja kick off their FIFA Women’s World Cup Brazil 2027™ qualifying campaign.
The humble midfield magician and her team-mates have their sights set firmly on securing a place at the finals and defending their crown. Caldentey is in the finest form of her career, as evidenced by her recent inclusion in The Best FIFA Women’s 11.
Spain face a tough test in their Women’s World Cup preliminaries as they prepare to face England, Iceland and Ukraine. The reigning world champion sat down with FIFA to provide her thoughts on the rise of Spanish football, the high-profile rivalry with England in recent years, her recollections of the World Cup crown conquered in 2023 and what lies in wait in 2027.
Mariona Caldentey: We’re coming off the back of winning the [UEFA] Nations League and we’re still in top form. Our group is by no means easy. We’ll be facing England again. Only the group winners qualify directly, so it’s going to be really, really tough. We can’t afford to slip up. We’re really excited about the World Cup, and hopefully we can avoid the play-offs. We’re the reigning champions, and even though that triumph feels like it came a long time ago, that’s the reality. We’re setting our sights on Brazil to defend what’s ours, and hopefully we can do that. But the qualifiers aren’t going to be easy.
It’s been a process and an evolution that’s come about quite naturally. The current crop of players have been working together for many years and we have that core group from the same club [FC Barcelona], which gives you an advantage because you don’t get much time to work together with the national team. I think this generation has slowly but surely reached the level of maturity you need to be physically ready, which was kind of under scrutiny. We would string together lots of passes and play pretty well, but [we fell short] physically, or we didn’t score enough goals…
I think we had some clear weaknesses that each of us has worked on individually at our clubs and when we’ve all come together with the national team, and there has been a huge improvement. That has enabled our brand of football and style of play, which has always been there, to really flourish and come to the fore. We were just missing that cutting edge. There’s been a shift, and a lot of work has gone into that. Then it’s just a matter of getting over the line. At last year’s EURO, we came up just short due to fine margins, but now we’re in a position where we’re ready to beat anybody. And we have that confidence because we’ve already done it, which always helps.
I think we have two different approaches and styles, but just recently I was saying to some of my English club colleagues that those matches always ended up being decided by the smallest of margins. Whichever side comes out on top, they are always tight games where anything can happen. I think it’s a really great rivalry because you want to play against the very best and, obviously, England are right up there. Both teams play with intensity and have pace and quality in spades, and they’re always really good games to watch and play in, although you suffer as well. It’s no coincidence that the last two major tournament finals have been contested between us.
As long as we do our jobs well and keep improving, we know that we’re going to be there or thereabouts. We’ve talked about England, but there’s also Germany, France, Brazil, the USA… There are some really good teams out there and anything could happen. Being able to compete for titles is what every player wants. We know that our playing days go by in a flash and we have to make the most of them. The World Cup takes place every four years and we don’t know where we’ll be in another four years’ time. We really want to defend this title.
They are icons of the national team and of the Spanish game overall. It’s so wonderful that they’re now getting that recognition and those titles, after everything they’ve been through and all the years they’ve put in. They are our leaders in the dressing room and they will be extremely hard or even impossible to replace, because of everything they’ve given us over such a long time and the way they’ve gone about things.
They’re the perfect role models. It’s not just their quality that’s taken us this far, but also all the hard work they’ve put in. It’s really important to get that across to the youngsters who are coming up in a very different environment to the one we experienced. We’re very lucky to have them as leaders and benchmarks. They make the team so much stronger.
It was a historic moment, and things really changed from that point. The process and the way the tournament unfurled were really tough, and the conditions were different, but at the end of the day you’re a world champion. There’s no greater accolade with your national team. We set such a high bar, and we have to maintain that so we can try and do it all over again.
There are so many emotions when I think about that day, but at the same time it feels a lifetime ago because so much happens in football from one week to the next. A few years have already gone by, but the satisfaction, pride and joy in what we achieved made it an incredibly special moment for women’s football in Spain.
When you’re out on the pitch, you don’t have the energy to think or look at the scoreboard, but after I came off, I don’t think I sat down the entire time. All of us in the dugout were up on our feet, pacing around the technical area, and the fourth official was telling us to sit down… Those closing minutes seemed to drag on forever, but ultimately it’s a final and you expect it to go down to the wire. You have to suffer to win games. I remember when the referee blew the whistle and we ran out onto the middle of the pitch. It was such a beautiful moment.
