Gabby George probably knew she had not cleared it properly before the ball had finished leaving her boot.
There are certain moments in football where the mistake announces itself immediately.
Chiamaka Nnadozie had already done the difficult bit, getting down to stop Grace Geyoro’s effort after Kadidiatou Diani helped London City Lionesses work their way through Brighton. George arrived to deal with what remained.
Except she didn’t.
The clearance was scuffed. The ball rolled back towards the middle of the penalty area.
And waiting there was perhaps the single worst person in the Women’s Super League to whom you could accidentally present a loose football.
Alexia Putellas adjusted her body.
Left foot.
Bottom corner.
Then she ran towards the corner of Hayes Lane with her arms stretched wide.
For Putellas, goals are hardly unusual. Neither are trophies, big occasions or celebrations. She spent 14 years at Barcelona, won 38 trophies, lifted the Champions League three times, became a world champion with Spain and twice became the best women’s footballer on the planet.
But this one was new.
Her first goal for London City Lionesses.
Her first goal in England football.
Her first goal at a ground in Bromley where 4,177 people had packed into the stands on a Saturday evening to watch one of football’s most decorated players begin another chapter of a career that had already contained several lifetimes.
Perhaps that is the most interesting thing about Alexia Putellas joining London City.
She gets to have firsts again.
From Barcelona to Bromley
There is an obvious temptation to treat Putellas playing at Hayes Lane as some great novelty.
Camp Nou to Bromley.
Ninety-one thousand people to 4,177.
Barcelona to BR2.
Look how strange football has become.
Except the longer this London City project continues, the less strange any of it looks.
Putellas was one of six Spanish players in Eder Maestre’s starting XI against Brighton, alongside Elene Lete, Jana Fernández, Mapi León, Lucía Corrales and Daniela Arques.
Maestre is Spanish too.
There were Catalan flags hanging around the ground. Some supporters had travelled from Barcelona. A brass band provided the soundtrack.
This isn’t Barcelona transplanted into South London, exactly.
But there are certainly worse places to be Spanish right now.
More importantly, Putellas does not appear to have arrived for a ceremonial final chapter.
She is the captain.
She is starting games.
She is being asked to lead a team attempting something considerably more ambitious than simply surviving its early years in the WSL.
And against Brighton, she increasingly looked like a player beginning to understand how she fits into all of it.
The goal came after 29 minutes, but there had already been little signs.
Putellas operated centrally behind striker Freya Godfrey, with Diani and Danielle van de Donk moving around her. Geyoro and Arques provided the platform underneath.
That gave her freedom.
Not complete freedom, because English football rarely seems interested in providing anybody with that luxury, but enough.
She drifted into spaces. She connected moves. She arrived around the penalty area rather than simply living inside it.
Then George’s clearance arrived.
Sometimes tactics are complicated.
Sometimes somebody accidentally gives Alexia Putellas the ball 12 yards from goal.
A Goal That Looked Very Alexia
Putellas described the finish afterwards as part training, part instinct.
“You train these kind of things; it’s also intuition inside the box,” she said.
That feels about right.
Watch the goal again and the interesting part is not really the shot.
It is everything immediately before it.
The ball does not arrive perfectly. Putellas has to adjust. There are Brighton defenders between her and the goal. Nnadozie has just made a save and is trying to reset herself.
Putellas needs only a moment.
Her low half-volley finds the bottom-right corner.
There was no great ceremony required.
This was not a 25-yard thunderbolt designed for montages documenting the beginning of the Alexia Putellas era in England.
It was better than that.
It was a goalscorer’s goal.
See the loose ball.
Understand the picture.
Finish.
She had three shots during her 73 minutes and completed 33 of her 42 passes. Twenty of those completions came in Brighton’s half.
More revealingly, she nearly scored again.
Nine minutes into the second half, Putellas attacked a header and sent it against the post.
For a second, Hayes Lane prepared itself for number two.
Not yet.
Brighton Were Still There
That miss mattered because this was never quite the comfortable 2–0 victory the final score might suggest.
Brighton actually had slightly more possession.
They attempted more passes.
They produced 1.59 expected goals compared with London’s 1.36.
And six minutes after Putellas scored, they came extremely close to equalising.
Fran Kirby clipped the ball into the penalty area and Emily Murphy rose to meet it.
Her header sailed over Lete.
Crossbar.
The rebound fell into the chaos underneath and Kiko Seike attempted to react, but couldn’t quite sort her feet quickly enough. The chance disappeared.
It was the sort of sequence that becomes more significant the longer a game remains 1–0.
Brighton manager Arturo Ruiz noticed that too.
He felt London City became increasingly uncomfortable protecting their lead. His team were able to have the ball, move London City around and keep themselves in the contest.
The problem was what happened when they reached the interesting parts of the pitch.
Brighton managed ten shots.
One was on target.
They completed just one of nine crosses.
London City, despite having less possession, completed 84 passes in the final third to Brighton’s 56 and had twice as many touches inside the opposition penalty area, 22 to 11.
Brighton had the ball.
London City more often had it somewhere dangerous.
There is a difference.
The New Challenge
Perhaps this is where Putellas’ first goal becomes more interesting than simply another career milestone.
London City are trying to become unpredictable.
That was Putellas’ word afterwards.
“We can score through possession and counter-attacks,” she said.
Against Brighton, we saw both versions attempting to coexist.
There were spells when Maestre’s side wanted control, with Putellas acting as the connector between midfield and attack.
There were other moments when they seemed happier allowing Brighton forward and attacking the spaces left behind.
That requires adjustment from Putellas too.
Barcelona spent much of her career attempting to impose themselves upon matches through possession. London City, at least at this stage of their development, do not always need to dominate the ball to dominate the dangerous moments.
For a player who has already achieved almost everything, that adaptation is part of the attraction.
New league.
New teammates.
New physical demands.
New tactical problems.
New stadiums.
New firsts.
Even the broader circumstances are unusual.
In the same week she scored her first WSL goal, Putellas launched Eleven TV by Alexia, providing exclusive WSL broadcasts in Spain.
She is not merely playing in England.
She is helping carry English women’s football back in the opposite direction.
All while trying to work out where Geyoro wants the ball.
Football careers can become rather circular.
Brighton Could Not Quite Make London City Pay
For Brighton, the frustration is becoming familiar.
There were enough encouraging pieces here to imagine something better.
Lia Wälti gave their midfield composure. Kirby created Murphy’s best opportunity. Their shape made London City uncomfortable for periods.
But confidence is a peculiar thing.
Wälti admitted afterwards that Brighton might be missing “that little bit of confidence” required to make everything click.
You could see it.
The crossbar was the obvious example, but there were smaller moments too.
A pass slightly delayed.
A cross not quite reaching its target.
A promising possession ending without forcing Lete to make a save.
Their situation was made more difficult by the cards accumulating across the defence.
Caitlin Hayes was booked after 18 minutes.
Manuela Vanegas followed after 53.
George joined them after 65.
By the final stages, Brighton had three defenders trying to contain London City’s increasingly fresh attacking players while knowing another mistimed challenge carried consequences.
Then Maestre introduced Delphine Cascarino.
That was slightly unfair.
And Then Cascarino Started Running
Cascarino entered after 63 minutes.
Brighton’s defenders had already spent more than an hour dealing with Diani, Putellas, van de Donk and the constant movement around them.
Now they had Cascarino running at them.
London City did not immediately find the second goal, but the threat changed.
There was suddenly somewhere else for Brighton to look.
Putellas left after 73 minutes.
Her work was done.
For another 19 minutes, however, the game remained strangely alive.
One goal.
One mistake.
One Brighton attack.
One nervous moment.
Then Fran Kirby lost possession around halfway.
Van de Donk took it.
Cascarino went.
This was the other London City Putellas had spoken about.
No patient possession.
No elaborate construction.
Just grass.
Cascarino carried the ball towards the byline before looking across the penalty area.
And arriving from left-back was 19-year-old Lucía Corrales.
She had run roughly 60 yards to get there.
Cascarino found her.
Corrales struck the ball first time with her left foot and sent it across Nnadozie into the far corner.
2–0.
Goodnight.
Alexia Putellas Gets Another Beginning
After the match, Putellas talked about the three points.
Of course she did.
Footballers are wonderfully reliable in this respect. Score your first goal in a new country after leaving the club where you became one of the greatest players of your generation and somebody will eventually remind everyone that the important thing was the result.
And she is right.
London City beat Brighton 2–0.
Corrales scored the second.
Lete kept the clean sheet.
Three more points were added to the table.
But years from now, if this strange and enormously ambitious London City project becomes anything close to what its owners imagine, there will be photographs from these early days.
Small stands.
Catalan flags.
A brass band.
Hayes Lane squeezed full with 4,177 people.
And somewhere among them will be the image of Alexia Putellas running towards the corner after 29 minutes, arms stretched out, celebrating something she had done hundreds of times before.
Except she hadn’t.
Not here.
Not for them.
For the first time in a very long career defined by winning almost everything there was to win, Alexia Putellas had just done something for the first time.
