golden blonde¹

midfield magicians

mid september 2022
elena's first training sessions with her new teammates went surprisingly well; much above her expectations. sure, the first few days were about getting used to new drills, and even dreaded media presence.

elena had never had the camera on her much, thanks to playing with the likes of alexia putellas. back in barcelona, she usually hung out around bruna and jana during training. ocassionally elena liked hanging around with ingrid and mapi whenever the couple were not the focus of the media.

arsenal is a whole different story. elena learns from david price, or pricey, as the girls like to call him, that everyone on the training grounds got even attention.

elena had met the social media manager on her second day in london. the young man introduced himself as aidan, and elena soon realized he was very different from the media manager they had at barcelona.

aidan had an abundance of ideas, instead of doing all of his ideas on her first day, they had just done an introductory video.

elena had talked about how she grew up in la masia, and slowly rose in the ranks of the barcelona academy.

when aidan had asked her about her favorite memory playing football, elena had two different answers. the first was with barcelona, not on her debut, but when she played with her sister the first time. the first team football at barcelona had always been challenging, but somehow, elena felt calmer on the pitch when jana was behind her.

her second answer, to no surprise was her first cap with spain. the euros game she told caitlin the night before was fresh in her mind. elena had explained to aidan that it was probably the best moment of her life, representing her country at the euros, despite crashing out at the quarter-final stage.

when elena was asked about her loan to arsenal, she was unsure how to answer. of course she was happy to be here, an opportunity in a top league was always going to be an honor, elena had told aidan. she had yet to meet many of the girls, so her answer was short and vague.

finally, elena took pictures with the three different kits. the adidas kits had felt slightly different compared to the nike kits they had at barcelona.

elena would never admit it out loud to her sister, or possibly anyone for that matter, she was an adidas girl. even looking at the kits, elena smiled at the colors and designs. in no way was she upset over the barcelona kits her previous years, but glad that arsenal's kits would at least look good on her.

training took a little bit to get used to, but elena got the hang of it. her daily routine hadn't changed much. everyday, she'd wake up early, 6am maybe, same as in barcelona. she'd make breakfast, she used to eat eggs, avocados, and toast back in barcelona. surprisingly, here in london, she'd eat something different everyday.

elena had always been slow to get out of bed, as it turns out, lia woke up the same time as her everyday. they alternated breakfast days. sometimes elena would cook a simple breakfast, and other times lia would make an extravagant breakfast.

the three of them, caitlin, lia, and elena would drive over to london colney. lia's punctuality had always made them the first to arrive besides kim.

elena would hang out in the lounge room, reading a book, scrolling through her phone, or took english lessons from a staff member for the first thirty minutes or so. if she wasn't in the lounge room, she'd be in the gym.

after losing track of time, elena noticed her teammates had always arrived in the gym not long afterward, talking amongst themselves.

after the team gym session, work on the pitch. although different, elena had gotten used to the new drills the staff showed to the group. she had always prided herself in being a quick learner.