Elena Linari (born 15 April 1994) is an Italian professional

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby le ...

who plays as a

centre back In the sport of association football, a defender is an outfield position whose primary role is to stop attacks during the game and prevent the opposition from scoring. Centre-backs are usually positioned in pairs, with one full-back on either s ...

for

Serie A The Serie A (), also called Serie A TIM for national sponsorship with TIM, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the winner is awarded the Scudetto and the Coppa ...

club

AS Roma ' (''Rome Sport Association''), commonly referred to as Roma (), is a professional football club based in Rome, Italy. Founded by a merger in 1927, Roma has participated in the top tier of Italian football for all of its existence, except for ...

and the Italy women's national team. She has also played for

FC Girondins de Bordeaux Football Club des Girondins de Bordeaux (), commonly referred to as Girondins de Bordeaux ( oc, Girondins de Bordèu) or simply Bordeaux, is a French professional Association football, football club based in the city of Bordeaux in Gironde (de ...

Atlético Madrid Club Atlético de Madrid, Sociedad Anónima Deportiva, S.A.D. (; meaning "Athletic Club of Madrid"), known simply as Atleti in the Spanish-speaking world and commonly referred to at international level as Atlético Madrid, is a Spanish profess ...

Fiorentina ACF Fiorentina, commonly referred to as Fiorentina (), is an Italian professional football club based in Florence, Tuscany, Italy. The original team was founded by a merger in August 1926, while the actual club was refounded in August 2002 fo ...

and

Brescia Brescia (, locally ; lmo, link=no, label= Lombard, Brèsa ; lat, Brixia; vec, Bressa) is a city and ''comune'' in the region of Lombardy, Northern Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, a few kilometers from the lakes Garda and Iseo. ...

, and she has won four league titles, four

cups CUPS (formerly an acronym for Common UNIX Printing System) is a modular computer printer, printing system for Unix-like computer operating systems which allows a computer to act as a print server. A computer running CUPS is a Server (computi ...

and two supercups. She has represented Italy internationally since 2013. On 14 January 2021, she joined

on a free transfer and signed a contract until June 2021.

Club career

Linari started her youth career with Atletica Castello and played in inter-gender training matches until she moved to Claudio Desolati's football academy in Florence when Linari was fourteen years old. She then played for her region's football club Firenze for five seasons, beginning in the 2008-2009 season and making her Serie A debut at sixteen years of age with the club. Linari would also win a Primavera title with Firenze in the 2012-2013 season. The Italian defender would make a total 107 appearances for Firenze until Linari moved to Brescia in the summer of 2013. She won more team titles with Brescia, including winning the Serie A league title in her first season with the club. Linari also made her

UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competit ...

debut with Brescia on 9 October 2014. She would later with the

Coppa Italia The ("Italy Cup") is an annual knockout cup competition in Italian football organized by the FIGC until the 2009–10 season and the Lega Serie A ever since. History The beginning of the tournament was turbulent, due to the complexity of ...

in 2014-15, and win two Supercoppa trophies in 2014 and 2015. In the summer of 2016, Linari decided to return to her home region and play for Fiorentina, which is the club she has supported since she was a child. Linari would go on to win a league title and two Coppa Italia trophies during her two seasons playing for Fiorentina, before she chose to become the first female Italian football player to sign a professional contract when she signed with

in the summer of 2018. During her two-year stay in Spain, Linari won a

Liga Liga or LIGA may refer to: People * Līga (name), a Latvian female given name * Luciano Ligabue, more commonly known as Ligabue or ''Liga'', Italian rock singer-songwriter Sports * Liga ACB, men's professional basketball league in Spain * Liga ...

title and made the cup final with Atletico before moving to France to sign with Bordeaux in 2020. Her brief stay with Bordeaux was not successful, and Linari the offer to return to her native Italy and play with Roma from January 2021 onwards. During Linari's first six months of playing for Roma, the team's goal-concession rate dropped from 1.21 goals conceded per game to 0.88 goals conceded per game. Linari's arrival is widely credited with re-installing Roma's belief in their long-term goals as well as helping lead Roma to the club's first major trophy in the women's side of the game. On 30 May 2021, the Italian defender racked up 16 ball recoveries, completed 111 passes and won 5 aerial duels for Roma in their 2021 Coppa Italia final victory over

AC Milan Associazione Calcio Milan (), commonly referred to as AC Milan or simply Milan, is a professional football club in Milan, Italy, founded in 1899. The club has spent its entire history, with the exception of the 1980–81 and 1982–83 seasons ...

. That victory resulted in the fourth Coppa Italia winner's medal won by Linari in her playing career.

Career statistics

International goals

Honours

**Winners (1):

2022–23 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

Supercoppa Italiana The Supercoppa Italiana ( en, Italian Super Cup) is an annual football match contested by the winners of the Serie A and the Coppa Italia in the previous season. If the same team wins both the Serie A and Coppa Italia titles in the previous seaso ...

**Winners (1):

2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; 2022 Sri Lankan protests, Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretari ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Linari, Elena 1994 births Living people Italian women's footballers Italy women's international footballers Serie A (women's football) players AS Roma (women) players Women's association football defenders SSD Brescia Calcio Femminile players ACF Fiorentina (women) players Italian expatriate sportspeople in Spain 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup players Atlético Madrid Femenino players Liga F players LGBT association football players Italian LGBT sportspeople Italian lesbians Lesbian sportswomen Italian expatriate sportspeople in France Italian expatriate women's footballers Expatriate women's footballers in Spain Expatriate women's footballers in France ACF Firenze players FC Girondins de Bordeaux (women) players Footballers from the Metropolitan City of Florence UEFA Women's Euro 2022 players UEFA Women's Euro 2017 players 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup players