From Prodigy to Pillar: Clàudia Pina Is Here
Eight days, four matches, eight goals, and how Clàudia Pina went from a precocious savant to Barça Femení's latest foundational superstar.
On June 3, 2025, at Espanyol's RCDE Stadium in Cornellà (just outside Barcelona), the Spanish women squared off against England’s Lionesses with Group A3 of the 2025 UEFA Women's Nations League at stake.
Spain entered needing only a draw to lock up the group. Despite a dominant start, however, they fell behind early when Chelsea’s Niamh Charles—after what looked like a foul against Salma Paralluelo—released Arsenal’s Alessia Russo down the left, past the Spanish defense, and face-to-face with an onrushing Cata Coll.
La Roja controlled the subsequent 35 minutes as well, but with minimal end product. In the 57th minute, manager Montse Tomé made her first substitution, replacing Paralluelo with Pina. As is her wont, Pina wasted no time announcing her arrival.
Less than three minutes later, off of a failed clearance at the edge of the box, amid a converging triangle of defenders, Pina cuts onto her left and, effectively sprinting inside a phone booth, unleashes an improbably authoritative shot that nutmegs Jess Carter, wrong-foots Chelsea keeper Hannah Hampton, and finds the bottom right.
Four minutes later, she whips a 22-yard free kick around the England wall. The well-hit effort doesn’t threaten Hampton, but certainly has some bite to it. Not six minutes later, off an interception near the center circle, Ona Batlle (the best defender in the world, apropos of nothing) slides a pass to Pina, 25 yards out, dead center. With two quick touches, she sidesteps Man City’s Alex Greenwood and, ”con su alma,” simultaneously thumps and caresses an inch-perfect 20-yarder to seal the win.
The performance was significant, and not just because it was awesome. Nor because it was the fifth match in six since her return in which she’d scored. This was a spectacular, near single-handed comeback against elite opposition, with stakes, a month out from the Euros. A finishing touch on the revival of potentially brilliant international career that had stalled out.
Pina’s return to the national team came in November, 26 months after she, weeks following her 21st birthday, joined fourteen of her international teammates in demanding better treatment from the Spanish federation. When rebuffed by since-disgraced Spanish federation president Luis Rubiales, Las 15, as the group came to be known, each sent the same letter to the federation, indefinitely opting out of national team consideration.
As a majority of the 15 players, plus Alexia and Jenni Hermoso, who didn’t send the letter themselves but supported it, acknowledged sufficient progress—in part, the resignation of Rubiales and shitcanning of coach Jorge Vilda—to return for (and win) the 2023 World Cup, Pina, Patri, and Mapi León held firm. Patri returned in July 2024; Mapi hasn’t yet returned.
La Reina de la Copa
Four days later, 170 miles northwest in Huesca, Barça Femení met Atlético de Madrid in the Copa de la Reina final. This contest kicked off with Pina on the pitch. Her efforts ensured a similar conclusion.
Midway through the first half, with Barça in control, Caroline Graham Hansen, from the right corner of the box, finds Ewa Pajor about 15 yards out. Her back to goal, Pajor lays the ball off to the edge of the box, dead center, to a waiting Pina. As with her first strike against England, she’s got little room to maneuver. Again, it doesn't matter.
With more power than she has any business generating, she zips a practically flat-footed 18-yarder past veteran Atleti goalkeeper Lola Gallardo:
Barça continue to dominate, to the tune of 76% possession in the first half and over 70% for the game. However, for another 50 minutes, the lead remains 1-0, prone to a single error or moment of brilliance. Finally, in the 74th, from about eight yards out, Atleti center-back Lauren Leal clears an Esmee Brugts cross from the right, seemingly to safety. As the camera pans, a lone, figure emerges.
As she did in completing her brace against England, Pina deposits a spectacular 18-yarder into the bottom right. This time—because, fuggit—with the outside of her right foot, via airborne volley:
Four days, two matches, four goals, and an indelible mark. Not the first time.
4-2-4, 1.0
Loath as I am to mention it, I was in attendance on a couple of particular nights in Les Corts in the spring of 2022.
The first, on March 30—Champions League quarterfinal second leg, FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Camp Nou—was, by any definition, a masterpiece. An evening planned to be transcendent and billed as such that emphatically delivered on every bit of its promise, in numbers and vibes, pre…
… and postgame:
…
Lost amid the goosebumps is the fact that the game itself was a banger. An 8th-minute cross-cum-shot sending 91,553 into hysterics. An Irene Paredes handball eight minutes later, followed by an equalizing penalty, and some resolute defending by Madrid sent the sides into halftime at 1-1. But it was a 14-minute stretch just on the other side of the break that stripped the evening of its sanity.
In the 48th, about two seconds and five yards after picking up possession just inside the Barça half, Claudia Zornoza catches Sandra Paños off her line and uncorks an outrageous 45-yard chip to put Madrid ahead and potentially spoil the party…
Shortly after the hour mark, Alexia Putellas scores the goal that couldn’t not come on that night…
… and receives the requisite response.
In between?
An at-the-time interminable four minutes of genuine, jarred incredulity after Zornoza’s goal, snapped, Messi-style, by Aitana Bonmatí. Then, three minutes later, off a mix-up, a perfectly “lofted laser” across the box and into the top right to restore order:
I was familiar with the diminutive goal scorer. I’d watched her on TV throughout the season, most recently as she’d opportunistically helped stake Barça to a 3-1 first-leg advantage in Madrid. But this was my true introduction to The Clàudia Pina Experience.
To be 20, months removed from a lengthy loan spell, surrounded by established superstars, on the sport’s biggest stage, before the (by far) largest crowd of your career, and instinctually, without a moment’s thought, do that? It felt different.
Discovery Not (Really) Required
I’m far from the first person to discover Pina’s preternatural gifts. If we’re being honest, her talent doesn’t really warrant discovery—it does outreach.
If we are doling out credit for the discovery, though, a healthy helping is owed to the Espanyol scout who discovered a 10-year-old futsal player from Montcada (just north of Barcelona) in 2011. As future Barça stars Alexia, Mapi León, Marta Torrejón, and Vicky Losada also had/would, Pina signed on with Barcelona’s first women’s football power.
Jordi Ventura is also due some props. Assigned to watch one of Pina’s Espanyol youth teammates a couple of years later, the scout lasted only a few minutes before dipping out to call then-Barça Femení head coach Xavi Llores with a message: “The one they told us about is doing very well, but the one we should sign is Clàudia.”
As the story goes, he said this having seen her score twice with her left foot. Only later did he learn that she’s actually right-footed.
“She is one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. She has something different.”
Indeed.
Not long after, she was at La Masia. In her second season with Barça’s Infantil and Alevín teams (ages 12-13), she appeared in 20 games and scored… 100 goals.
In May 2016, months before her fifteenth birthday, Pina earned a spot on Spain’s U-16 team. By September, she was playing for the U-17s, with whom she scored a hat-trick in her debut. Weeks later, she was in Jordan for the 2016 U-17 World Cup, scoring in each of third-place Spain’s first two matches.
Star Turn
The following year, Pina was named to the Team of the Tournament as Spain finished second at the U-17 Euros. Her 16 goals for the national team during the calendar year also made her UEFA’s top international scorer, men’s or women’s.
By 2018, she was a full-blown phenom. In January, she debuted for Barça Femení’s senior team. At 16 years and five months, she was then (since overtaken by Vicky López and Lamine Yamal), the youngest player ever (men's or women's) to play for a senior Barça team in an official match. By the summer, still just 16, she was at the U-20 Women's World Cup in France. Alongside Aitana and Patri Guijarro (the tournament’s top scorer and Golden Ball winner), she helped Spain to the final, where they fell 3-1 to Japan.
A couple of months later, she was off to another World Cup, this time the U-17 version in Uruguay. As part of a Spain side that also featured Salma Paralluelo and Cata Coll, she was awarded the tournament’s Golden Ball after scoring seven goals across six matches, including both in a 2-1 final win over Mexico.
So, yeah, Clàudia’s been coming for a while.
Anyway, back to the spring of ‘22.
Camp Nou Carryover
Four days after that Camp Nou fever dream, in league play against Villarreal, came the hangover.
As they’d needed a moment to fully find their bearings before a monstrous crowd, Barça needed a moment to reacclimate to the intimate surroundings of the Estadi Johan Cruyff. Salma Paralluelo rather spectacularly did not, and sent Barça into halftime down 1-0, with their 49-game home winning streak at risk.
During the break, with the rest of the team in the locker room, Pina and Mapi León, on the bench to start the game, stayed out to warm up before coming on to start the second half. Mapi, unsurprisingly, stabilized the defense. But it was Pina’s impact, immediate and comprehensive, that overshadowed whatever else was going on.
Two minutes into the half, just inside the box, she claws back possession of an Aitana backheel and calmly rolls the ball into the bottom right to level the score. One minute later, a failed Villarreal move ends with Ingrid Engen on the ball near the center circle. Her first touch is to Alexia, whose first touch is a backheel to Aitana in space, about thirty yards out. With her second touch, Aitana releases Pina, who takes a touch herself before rifling an 18-yard left-footer into the bottom right:
Fifteen minutes later, with Barça now up 3-1, having narrowly missed completing her hat trick via a 19-yard volley, Pina, all of 5-foot-3, completes her trifecta by boxing out a defender like an NBA power forward and thumping a mishit clearance into the roof of the net with the top of her head:
Four days, two matches, four goals.
It wasn’t her first senior hat-trick. That had come three weeks earlier against Alavés. Nor, as we’ve covered, was it anything close to her first scoring flurry. But, in light of her goal at Camp Nou, it felt like an inflection point.
Hittin’ Different
The version of Clàudia Pina that bowled me over back then was super raw. Unbridled. She could get tunnel-visioned and struggled a bit with the timing and touch on her passes. Her aggressiveness and decision-making would need tempering and shaping, but less through coaching than firsthand experience and maturation.
For whatever ways she still had to go, her game had genuine superstar notes. The breadth and depth of her talent were palpable. Ambidexterity from futsal, positional dexterity from Barça as finishing school, smarts, toughness, tirelessness, ludicrous talent, and incredible instincts. Even at first (more or less) glance, it’s special. In a way that few players will ever claim, she is a savant.
What stood out every bit as starkly that afternoon against Villarreal, though, was her voracity. From the moment she hit the pitch, her immediacy and purpose on each change of possession and move toward the Villarreal box were relentless. Different.
She followed up that hat trick with a pair of one-goal, two-assist league outings, and tallied an assist against Real Madrid in the Copa de la Reina semifinal. Then, in the wake of a crushing Champions League final loss to Lyon, she scored and assisted in a 6-0 final win over Huelva. All told, she tallied 19 goals and 15 assists in 36 matches in all competitions.
Again, not bad for a 20-year-old joining a veteran-laden, treble-winning juggernaut.
Settling Back In
Though not quite as statistically dominant, Barça’s 2022-23 season was objectively better for the trophy cabinet, with another league title and a second Champions League win. There were, however, tinges of disappointment to the campaign. Initially, it was Alexia’s absence following ACL surgery. Later, it was Barça’s ouster from the Copa de la Reina for fielding an ineligible player, derailing a likely treble.
For Pina, the second season back in Barcelona was similarly productive—10 goals, nine assists in 22 league matches, three and two in 7 in the Champions League. En route to the completion of a personal treble, she conjured another Camp Nou golazo, this one a damn thunderbolt:
Ironically, the 2023-24 season that delivered Barça Femení’s second treble was Pina’s “worst” since her return. She still scored 16 goals and dished out eight assists in 42 matches. However, there was a sense (to me, entirely anecdotally) that former manager Jonatan Giráldez only ever saw Pina in a supporting role, a super fun gadget rather than a foundational superstar entering her prime.
One could reasonably argue that the team sitting at the apex of a sport, perennially (over)loaded with superstars and legends, isn’t really in the development game. Veteran superstars aren’t tutors, nor are they keen on ceding their spots in the pecking order. The train doesn’t stop. You’ve got to be fast enough to jump on.
In reintegrating into the side, establishing herself alongside Alexia, Aitana, Jenni Hermoso, Patri, Mariona, CGH, Lieke Martens, Asisat Oshoala, and Fridolina Rolfö, she had proved she did belong at the top table. Her persistent on-pitch growth amid continued turnover up front—as Martens, Hermoso, Mariona, and Oshoala left, Paralluelo, Geise, new Alexia, and Ewa Pajor came in—bolstered her “foundational” bona fides.
Still shy of her 23rd birthday at season’s end, Pina’s moment had hardly passed. At the same time, nearly six and a half years had passed since her senior debut…
New Heights
This past season offered a fresh opportunity. Pina, now wearing the #9 shirt and playing under a new coach, Pere Romeu, seized it.
In all, since returning from Sevilla in 2021, she’s taken part in 154 league, Champions League, Copa de la Reina, and Supercopa de España matches and scored 70 goals, with 42 assists. In 2024-25, Pina saw the pitch 40 times for Barça in 2024-25, scoring 22 goals and assisting on another eight—including a ridiculous 10 goals (plus an assist) in just nine Champions League matches. Awesome as all that is, it leaves an awful lot untold.
Pointing out that, for good measure, all seven of her senior international goals and three assists, including one in Thursday night’s 5-0 win over Portugal to kick off the Euros, have come in ten matches since her return last November gets us closer, but still misses the incandescence that’s brought us here.
I’m not sure what my favorite detail is here. It could be the four sub-35-minute multi-goal outings. The near-perfect 25 minutes that effectively ended Chelsea’s Champions League campaign? The actual perfect 10 against Betis in barely an hour, perhaps?
By my count (counting the assist against Portugal on Thursday), that’s 16 goals and eight assists in 17 matches over 100 days.
Who does that??
NO! We’re NOT going there…
What Next?
At her best, Pina doesn’t feel like, say, Alexia, whose tireless work ethic is sometimes inextricable from the greatness it begets. Nor is she Patri, a similarly special talent and near-flawless technician who often back-burners artistry in a her role as a fulcrum and facilitator.
Neither is she Aitana. Equally skilled, spectacular, tireless, and tough as fucking nails, Barça’s most recent two-time Ballon d’Or winner’s spontaneity—and dominance in general—feel almost planned. Aitana makes multiple breathtaking split-second, pinpoint plays a game. But even in the craziest scenario, you sense she’s considered even this particular eventuality. With Pina, even when she’s dominating, she’s not scripting the action. She’s just ready for any eventuality because she just is.
Her closest comp is another Barça teammate, Caroline Graham Hansen. Pina and CGH both possess the same innate gift for the spontaneously remarkable and insatiable appetites for goals.
A quick aside: Every world-class attacker, let alone a tippy-top-tier one, has significant “I’m gettin’ mine” to their game. These two are no different. That said, there's an uncommon earnestness to their relentlessness. The game seems to flow through them. Theirs is not “look at me getting mine.” They do what they do when they do it because “What the hell else are you supposed to do?”
It is worth noting that, although she does it better than almost anyone does anything, CGH primarily impacts the game in a specific way: off the right wing, with a devastating crossover. While Pina’s at her best attacking from the left channel, there’s really nowhere in the attacking half where she’s at a disadvantage.
It’s impossible to look at the end of this past season as anything other than transformative. Despite massive disappointment in the Champions League final, her ludicrous form since late March into Euro 2025 feels like the start of a new chapter—one in which Clàudia Pina is the best attacker in the women’s game, a Ballon d’Or winner (I’m calling 2026) and, in time, Barça Femení’s next leading light.
Seem sudden? Nah. It’s been coming.
