Leila Ouahabi El Ouahabi (born 22 March 1993) is a Spanish 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 left-back for Women's Super League club

Manchester City Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The tw ...

and the Catalonia national team. She has also played for Spain. Born in Catalonia, Ouahabi played youth football with Barcelona before being elevated to become a first team player for the 2011–12 season. She left Barcelona to join Valencia in 2013, before returning to the club in 2016. She had won numerous accolades with Barcelona, which includes the UEFA Women's Champions League,

Primera División Primera may refer to * Nissan Primera, a car * Primera Air, a former airline * Primera división (disambiguation), multiple top division football leagues * Primera, Texas, a town in Cameron County, Texas * Alí Primera, Venezuelan musician, compos ...

, and

Copa de la Reina Copa or COPA may refer to: COPA COPA may refer to: * Computer Operator Programming Assistant. trade of ITI * Child Online Protection Act, a former U.S. law to protect minors from certain material on the internet * Canadian Owners and Pilots Asso ...

. She left Barcelona to join Manchester City in the summer of 2022. A full international since 2016, Ouahabi had represented the Spain national team in the

2019 FIFA Women's World Cup The 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup was the eighth edition of the FIFA Women's World Cup, the quadrennial international Women's association football championship contested by 24 women's national teams representing member associations of FIFA. It ...

and the UEFA Women's Euro 2022.

Early life

Ouahabi was born in Mataró, Catalonia to a family of Moroccan origin. Growing up, she would play futsal with her brother and at one point joined a futsal team of eleven other boys. The first club she joined was a girl's youth team of the club

UE Vilassar de Mar Unió Esportiva Vilassar de Mar is a Spanish football club based in Vilassar de Mar, in the autonomous community of Catalonia. Founded in 1923 it currently plays in Tercera División RFEF – Group 5, holding home matches at ''Estadi Municipal X ...

Club career

Barcelona

Ouahabi was thirteen when she joined Barcelona's youth teams in 2007. After five years of elevating through the ranks of

La Masia La Masia de Can Planes, usually shortened to La Masia (; en, "The Farmhouse"), is a term used for FC Barcelona's youth academy. The academy includes more than 300 young players. It has been an instrumental factor in Barcelona's European success ...

, she became a first-team player for the 2011–12 season. This season saw Barcelona achieve their first ever league title win. Ouahabi was frustrated with a lack of playing time after playing a second year in the Spanish

with Barcelona.

Valencia

She joined Valencia in 2013, where she remained until 2016.

Return to Barcelona

In the summer of 2016, Ouahabi re-signed with Barcelona from Valencia. She won three

titles, five

titles, two

Supercopa de España The Supercopa de España or the ''Spanish Super Cup'' is a super cup tournament in Spanish football. Founded in 1982 as a two-team competition, the current version has been contested since 2019–20 by four teams: the winners and runners-up of ...

titles and the UEFA Women's Champions League in her second spell at Barcelona, including the continental treble of Primera División, Copa de la Reina and Champions League in 2021.

Manchester City

Ouahabi joined

from Barcelona in 2022 on a two-year deal. She made her club debut in a UEFA Women's Champions League tie against FC Tomiris Turan on 19 August 2022, and her goal debut in the first minute of a 5-0 victory against West Ham United, on 21 April 2024.

International career

Ouahabi has played for Spain's U19 national team. Ouahabi earned her first senior national team callup in February 2016 under newly appointed Spain coach

Jorge Vilda Jorge Vilda Rodríguez (born 7 July 1981) is a Spanish Association football, football coach and UEFA Pro Licence holder, who is the current head coach of the Spain women's national football team - a position he has held since 2015. Vilda is also ...

. A month later, Ouahabi made her senior international debut for Spain on 4 March 2016, starting a 0–0

friendly Friendly may refer to: Places * Friendly, West Yorkshire, a settlement in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, England * Friendly, Maryland, an unincorporated community in the United States * Friendly, Eugene, Oregon, a neighborhood in the United States * ...

draw with Romania in Mogoșoaia. In February 2017, Ouahabi was called up to the Spain squad for the 2017 Algarve Cup, her first call-up for a senior national team tournament. Her first international goal turned out to be the winning goal in the

2017 Algarve Cup The 2017 Algarve Cup was the 24th edition of the Algarve Cup, an invitational women's football tournament held annually in Portugal. It took place from 1 to 8 March. Format The twelve invited teams were split into three groups that played a rou ...

final against Canada. At the

2019 Women's World Cup The 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup was the eighth edition of the FIFA Women's World Cup, the quadrennial international Women's association football championship contested by 24 List of women's national association football teams, women's national ...

Ouahabi started one group stage match, a 0–0 draw against China. The draw was enough to get them past the group stages for the first time in Spain's history where they would then face the United States in the Round of 16. Ouahabi started that Round of 16 match, where Spain had a convincing performance but lost 1–2 against the eventual tournament winners. She ended the tournament having played 180 minutes. She was one of '' Las 15'', a group of players who made themselves unavailable for international selection in September 2022 due to their dissatisfaction with head coach Jorge Vilda, and among the dozen who were not involved 11 months later as Spain won the World Cup.

Career statistics

Club

International

:''Scores and results list Spain's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Ouahabi goal.''

Honours

Barcelona *

: 2011–12,

2012–13 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...

, 2019–20,

2020–21 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 ...

, 2021–22 * UEFA Women's Champions League:

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

2013 File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fact ...

2017 File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a ser ...

2018 File:2018 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea; Protests erupt following the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi; March for Our Lives protests take place across the United ...

, 2019–20,

, 2021–22 * Supercopa Femenina: 2019–20, 2021–22 * Copa Catalunya: 2017, 2018, 2019 Spain * Algarve Cup:

References

External links

Leila Ouahabi
at BDFutbol * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ouahabi, Leila 1993 births Living people Spanish women's footballers Spain women's international footballers Liga F players FC Barcelona Femení players Sportspeople from Mataró Footballers from the Province of Barcelona Spanish sportspeople of Moroccan descent Valencia CF Femenino players Women's association football fullbacks UE Vilassar de Mar players 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup players FC Barcelona Femení B players Sportswomen from Catalonia UEFA Women's Euro 2022 players UEFA Women's Euro 2017 players Expatriate women's footballers in England 21st-century Spanish women Women's Super League players Spanish expatriate women's footballers Catalonia women's international footballers