The Unwritten Legacy of Barcelona Femení

Barcelona Femení have been the benchmark of European women’s football for years, winning leagues, lifting Champions League trophies, and playing a style of football that is as admired as it is effective. And yet, right now, the champions feel oddly fragile: reports in Spain this week noted that Barça enter the new season with just 17 first-team players, departures that sting, and a worrying financial reality.

This moment of thin margins on the pitch has, what was to me a genuinely surprising parallel on the bookshelf. As of August 13, 2025, there is just one dedicated, English-language book about the women’s club: Rise of a New Dynasty: FC Barcelona Femení’s Emerging Legacy (Pitch Publishing, 2024). That said, so far I haven't identified many domestic club biographies across the patch. By contrast, a cursory look at men’s domestic clubs reveals a market awash with dedicated titles - Soccer Books lists literally hundreds of books about domestic clubs (a rabbit hole I will go down another day!) This seems like a genuine gap in the sports publishing market - Barcelona Femení's story, from struggling for recognition to selling out Camp Nou and dominating Europe, would make for compelling reading.

There is  a small but growing set of biographies on some of the team’s most high-profile players, such as Alexia Putellas and Aitana Bonmatí. These are welcome additions, but they don’t yet offer the kind of full-club perspective the men’s side has enjoyed for decades.

Of course, if you read Spanish or Catalan, there’s more choice, including Manel Tomàs’s Barça Femenino, historia desde los orígenes hasta el Triplete (2022) and Mi primer Barça Femenino by Noemí Fernández Selva and illustrated by Moni Pérez (I love the cover art for this!) But for English-language readers, the story is mostly told in match reports, short features, and online profiles, rather than in-depth books.

The lack of English-language books about Barcelona Femení isn’t just a publishing oversight, it’s a missed opportunity to understand one of the most transformative forces in women’s sport. What does it say about whose stories we preserve, and whose we overlook?