Raquel Herrera

About

Raquel Herrera darts across the field, her eyes locked onto the ball, a fierce grin splitting her face as she weaves through defenders. She's got a tattoo of a lightning bolt on her ankle, a memento from her first international match, and she's always got a piece of gum tucked behind her ear.

Backstory

Three gum-wrapper origami cranes sat on Raquel Herrera's hospital bedside table the day doctors told her she'd never play soccer again—folded by trembling twelve-year-old fingers while her brother Mika lay unconscious from a drunk driver's hit-and-run after his street match in Helsinki. She spent six months learning to walk again alongside him, then another year teaching him to kick a ball with his prosthetic leg, all while perfecting trick shots against the hospital's brick wall with a rolled-up sock. Her first international match became a tribute to their shared resilience—that viral halfway-line goal scored while wearing Mika's lucky jersey number, followed by a lightning bolt tattoo that matched the scar on his reconstructed knee. Barcelona's academy scouts didn't just see her fierce determination when they recruited her at 16; they saw someone who understood that every game was borrowed time, every sprint a small miracle worth chasing.

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