Martina Fernández Vila (born 1 October 2004) is a Spanish footballer who plays as a defender or midfielder for Liga F club Barcelona and Spain under-23. She also captains Barcelona Femení B.

Early and personal life

Martina Fernández Vila was born on 1 October 2004 and is from

Ordis Ordis is a municipality in the ''comarca'' of Alt Empordà, Girona, Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationality'' by its Statute ...

in Girona, Catalonia. She grew up near to her maternal grandparents, with whom she maintains a close relationship. She began studying biomedicine but, in 2023, stopped pursuing this as a career to focus on football. As of 2024, she continues part-time study at a biomedical laboratory.

Club career

Borrassà and Girona

Fernández' first sport was tennis, but she told her mother that she preferred football; her mother looked for ways to enable this and went to the football club in the next town,

Borrassà Borrassà is a municipality in the ''comarca'' of Alt Empordà, Girona, Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationality'' by its St ...

. Though the girls' team was fully subscribed, the coach allowed Fernández to take part in a trial session with the boys' team at her mother's insistence: after three sessions, the coach promised to sign her. She spent three years at Borrassà before signing for Girona FC Femení B. At Girona, she played with the second team (considered its youth cadet team, generally 19-year-olds) from the start, rather than age group teams, staying for two seasons.

Barcelona

Fernández joined Barcelona in the women's youth section in 2018. In her first year with the club she stayed with her family in the province of Girona, over from Barcelona, and travelled with other players to train. Often ignoring the toll this took, her family then asked that she be supported to live at a school in Barcelona; after half a season of this situation, the COVID-19 pandemic forced her back to Ordís. Fernández moved back to Barcelona later in the year with her older sister. When the club opened Oriol Tort Training Centre, including a girls' student dormitory as part of La Masia, in 2021, one of the nine places was given to Fernández. She played her first official match for the first team in February 2022, becoming one of the youngest debutants in the senior squad. She made five appearances in the league and Copa de la Reina in the 2021–22 and

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 ...

seasons. She then had a larger role in the 2023–24 season, due to a large number of injuries to the squad's first team defenders, establishing herself as a central defender. She made her UEFA Women's Champions League debut on 13 December 2023 against Rosengård, and scored her first goal for Barcelona in the 92nd minute of this game.

International career

Fernández was first called up to the Spain under-19 squad in October 2021, for European matches, but did not make the final travelling squad. On 9 November 2022 she scored the opening goal in Spain's 3–0 defeat of Czech Republic at Pinatar Arena. In 2022 she won the Under-19 Euro title, and helped Spain defend it when they won again in the 2023 Under-19 Euro. She played the whole 120 minutes of the final that was eventually decided on

penalties Penalty or The Penalty may refer to: Sports * Penalty (golf) * Penalty (gridiron football) * Penalty (ice hockey) * Penalty (rugby) * Penalty (rugby union) * Penalty kick (association football) * Penalty shoot-out (association football) * Penalty ...

. On 30 November 2023, Fernández debuted with the under-23 team, starting and playing the full match in a friendly against Sweden.

Career statistics

Honours

;Barcelona *

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 ...

: 2020–21, 2021–22,

* Copa de la Reina: 2021–22 *

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 ...

: 2023–24 Spain under-19 * UEFA Women's Under-19 Championship:

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 ...

2023 Events Predicted and scheduled events * January 1 ** In the United States, books, films, and other works published in 1927 will enter the public domain, assuming there are no changes made to copyright law. ** Croatia will adopt the eu ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fernandez, Martina 2004 births Living people Women's association football midfielders Women's association football defenders Spanish women's footballers FC Barcelona Femení players Footballers from Catalonia