The trip to Barcelona represented a considerable leap in football custom. However, the same evolution no longer occurs in out-of-tune states.
Later, as a coach, Bonmati and his Barcelona youth teammates made do with cold showers in makeshift conversion rooms.
The gym classes and video tactical research conferences, critical to developing their youthful minds and bodies for the professional game, never happened.
And, while their male counterparts had the famous Los Angeles Masía, Barcelona’s youth players had indistinguishable residential facilities on site to support their training.
Rather, once they finished their three-hour training classes in the middle of the night, Bonmati watched his teammates board popular cars to return to their sovereign cities, taking advantage of the vacation to review their schoolwork as they went.
And that’s why they had been the lucky ones.
To speed up the popular delivery of each and every generation, Bonmati took first the bus and then the teacher, so that he could teach with Barcelona. This was because her mother suffers from fibromyalgia, a chronic muscle pain condition, and was often unable to force herself and her father had failed her test.
It was a 23-mile advance and more than a moment each way for Bonmati.
“I was running to avoid missing the train home… I even wondered if it was worth all the effort,” he admitted last year, remembering those days.
“He got tired because it was hard,” said his aunt Lili. “He was on the verge of giving up football when he was a teenager.”
Aitana was 13 years old when her mother suggested that, in addition to running hard against her goals, she should also work on herself.
Bonmati started out as an optical psychologist, who specializes in accepting frustration as a normal part of achievement and the pursuit of excellence.
One of the most intense exercises he discovered, like writing, made his feelings unwilling to bear the burden of his thoughts, and he still practices it today.
However, throughout those trying years, Bonmati’s love for football never wavered. Former teammate Carla Rivera vividly remembers Bonmati’s relentless pursuit of development.
“I remember she was very demanding of herself, obsessed with the sport and motivated to improve,” Rivera told BBC Game.
“Sometimes she would spend the night at my house after late training sessions and after dinner she would become engrossed in football-related content on the Internet.”
Obsession did not translate into quick luck. When Lluís Cortés was named Barcelona coach in 2019, Bonmati, 21, was a perimeter player.
“Aitana is a very ambitious player who always wants to play and be important, and that role turned out to be a challenge for her,” Cortés admitted about Bonmati’s partial presence within the team.
On the other hand, Cortés, who knew the midfielder from his career with the Catalan team, soon allowed himself to be convinced by her decision and his electorate.
“She is a player who gives everything in every training session and with that she has undoubtedly secured her place in the first team,” he added.
Since then, Bonmati has become a key player in Barcelona’s midfield, winning four consecutive local titles and two Champions Leagues.
The Bonmati wearer for club and national team closest to Alexia Putellas, her predecessor as Ballon d’Or winner, suffered trauma to her knee ligaments in 2022.
