Alexia Putellas lifted her last trophy as a Barcelona player on Saturday at the Ullevaal Stadion in Oslo, closing a chapter that began the moment she won her first Copa Catalunya with the first team in 2012.
Putellas leaves with 38 titles in 14 years at Barcelona — the most of any footballer in the club’s history. That haul includes 10 Ligas, 11 Copas de la Reina, six Supercopas de España, four Champions League trophies and seven Copas Catalunya. Her final prize for the club was the Champions League trophy she raised in Oslo this weekend.
The scale of Putellas’s haul matters because it eclipses the benchmark set by Leo Messi, who departed Barcelona with 35 titles. Messi amassed his 35 honors across 17 seasons from 2004 to 2021, a total made up of 10 Ligas, eight Supercopas de España, seven Copas del Rey, four Champions Leagues, three Supercopas de Europa and three Mundiales de Clubs.
Her 38 titles mean Putellas surpassed Messi’s Barcelona total this season, and La Vanguardia has framed her career as the most successful trophy haul in the club’s history. A separate assessment in SPORT described Putellas’s departure from Barça as the close of a glorious era and identified her as a symbol of the growth of women’s football in Spain.
The numbers are stark: more trophies, in fewer years. Putellas arrived in the first-team orbit in 2012 and over 14 seasons turned that early Copa Catalunya into a collection unmatched at Camp Nou. The list of honors reads like a history of Barcelona’s dominance on the domestic and European women's stage; the Champions League titles bookend the period in which the team also helped raise the profile of the women's game in Spain.
There is a friction in the tidy record. Winning repeatedly across domestic cups, league campaigns and continental finals is one measure of success; comparisons with Messi’s career invite another. Messi’s 35 trophies came over 17 seasons and included international club trophies — a different arc, a different context — while Putellas’s 38 titles are concentrated within the modern rise of Barcelona’s women’s side. Both figures are facts; the tension is in how each will be remembered within the club’s broader history.
Putellas’s final act in Oslo forces the club and its supporters to reckon with an unfamiliar headline: Barcelona’s single greatest trophy earner is a player from the women's team. That conclusion reshapes a narrative long dominated by the men’s side and, according to the sports press, crystallizes the recent growth and legitimacy of women's football in Spain.
When she first lifted a Copa Catalunya in 2012, Putellas was at the start of what would become a period of sustained success; when she lifted the Champions League this Saturday, she closed it. She leaves Barcelona not just as a decorated captain but as the benchmark the club will now be measured against — 38 titles, more than any player who has worn the Barça shirt.
