13 years later, Levante is getting closer to returning to the Women's Champions League. María Pry's team is second in the Primera Iberdrola classification, with six points of advantage over Madrid CFF, which is the first team outside the European zone. The Valencians dream of returning to compete on a continental level and they do so driven by a high level of the team in all their demarcations. From the front where Esther is top scorer in the league with 20 goals, to the goal, in which María Valenzuela has built a great wall this season.
At 18, the goalkeeper born in Churriana de la Vega he is signing a sensational season with Levante. A performance that has led him to join the plans of Jorge Vilda in the Spanish women's team, with which he was summoned last FIFA date. Despite not making his debut with La Roja, Valenzuela has a great projection having passed through the lower categories and being a representative of the golden generation that conquered the 2018 U-17 World Cup in Uruguay.
Valenzuela faces today (14:00) with Levante the first of the eleven finals that remain to reach the continental dream. There are six appointments in Buñol and to start this local cycle, the granotas will be seen against EDF Logroño, the reissue of the semifinal of the Spanish Super Cup in Almería and the rival of María Valenzuela's debut in the Primera Iberdrola. That 1-2 of October 3, 2020 in Las Gaunas was its premiere in the competition and Pry decided to give the starting role from the beginning to a very young goalkeeper that came from Granada, with the vitola of having been protagonists in the Iberdrola Challenge, caressing the promotion.
Valenzuela has won the fight for ownership to Andreea Paraluta
Now, its ownership is unquestionable before a Andreea Paraluta who has only played five league games and the Super Cup (the semifinal against Logroño and the final against Atlético). María's numbers are spectacular in the 18 games she has participated: 15 wins, 2 draws and only one loss (Barcelona's 0-3 in Buñol). In addition, he has conceded only 18 goals conceded and has managed to close seven games with a clean sheet.
His security between clubs despite his inexperience in the elite is being one of the keys to success. Maria has had a meteoric growth in the women's soccer, in which she began her career in this sport at the age of 13, when being in the Children's CD Churriana de la Vega received the first call with the inferiors of the selection for a Portugal Development Tournament. On that occasion, a muscle injury forced him to wait for a new opportunity in England.
Debut in the lower categories of the National Team at the age of 14
His debut was with 14 years in Birmingham, in a UEFA Women's Young Promises Tournament in which he played every game, winning the final against Finland (1-0). She remembers that that first time she caught him eating lentils, curiously the same as with the appointment with the U-17 to prepare for the World Cup in Uruguay. In Charrúa lands, and already in the discipline of Granada, she was the youngest (16 years old) of the three goalkeepers summoned in the list of 22 together with Cata Coll and Paula Suárez and she lived the appointment from the bench.
In that World Cup, the now granota played a previous friendly against Mexico's own team. With the U-17s he was also a continental semi-finalist in the 2019 edition in Bulgaria after falling short of the final after losing to the Netherlands and starting all four games.. In August of that same year, she won the gold glove as the best goalkeeper in COTIF. (International U-20 Tournament in L'Alcúdia) that was awarded the U-19.
María Valenzuela is the pride of her land
Before the recent call from the Absolute at 18 years old, which she learned from a call from her partner Irene Guerrero while she was taking a walk through the forest and from the emotion of the moment she was even lost, it had already appeared in the U-20 plans. Born in Churriana de la Vega, Valenzuela's history has been closely linked to her town's team, where she won several provincial championships, until she became one of the goalkeepers of the Granada CF first team and continued with an unstoppable projection.
The U-17 World Cup in Uruguay brought with it many special mentions such as obtaining the Andalusia's gold medal, that of the Granada Football Federation for being the first in the history of Granada football to win a World Cup and was chosen best athlete in her hometown. In El Frascuelo, the Municipal Stadium of Churriana de la Vega, two photographs of him show off: one with the World Cup and the other playing with the Spanish. These images show the successful start of a goalkeeper whose projection is enormous in Spanish football.