How Spain midfielder battled cancer and is chasing Euros dream

Two yrs ago, Virginia Torrecilla, now 27, was living lifestyle to the fullest as a qualified soccer participant, coaching with Atletico Madrid and dreaming of the next Entire world Cup with the Spanish nationwide workforce. Then 2020 arrived all around. The pandemic hit, but there was far more troubling information for the young midfielder: She discovered out she had most cancers.

Soccer rapidly took a again seat. “When I was diagnosed with cancer, the very first factor I feel of, certainly, is living. Soccer went from becoming my priority in lifetime to getting in fifth or sixth spot for me,” Torrecilla claimed in an job interview with ESPN.

The Atleti player was diagnosed with most cancers in the spring of 2020. It all began with a sequence of headaches and neck ache, which prompted her to endure a scan to get to the root of her challenge. Health professionals found out a brain tumor. Immediately after undergoing surgical procedure, Torrecilla posted a online video on her Instagram describing the circumstance and commented that she was excited about successful the “most crucial match of her lifestyle.”

She introduced to her social media viewers that she would be absent from the recreation extended than expected, with the caption “I will be again! For now, I will be a person extra admirer in the group,” the midfielder wrote.

Physicians predicted Torrecilla would have a challenging time returning to the activity to which she’d focused her everyday living right after all, the midfielder experienced manufactured waves in 2012 as a single of the youngest at any time to make an visual appearance in the Primera División de la Liga de Fútbol Femenino (identified as the Superliga Female back then) when she went into the UD Collerense initial crew at age 15. Even so, with the passing months and chemotherapy, she retained dreaming of building a return to the area.

“They would notify me that I would be capable to perform once again due to the fact every little thing was going very well and I was enthusiastic,” she explained. “At the conclude of the working day my precedence was my recovery, my wellbeing and earlier mentioned all else [to] reside, but there comes a instant exactly where they tell you it will go. With that arrived my motivation to play soccer all over again and be the Virginia I was prior to.”

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Players showed their help all through her treatment method — Diego Costa celebrated a purpose by keeping up her No. 14 shirt — and in Oct, 2020, Torrecilla manufactured her to start with general public visual appeal again at the club, and was satisfied with a distinctive concept in the push area: “For you, for Vir, for all. Atleti.”

She was producing development down the highway to recovery final 12 months when lifestyle threw her yet another private challenge: On June 3, 2021, Torrecilla and her mom, Mari, have been in a automobile incident that still left her mom paralyzed from the waistline down. Torrecilla, unhurt in the crash, described the incident on her social media.

“I remember perfectly how my mom advised me she couldn’t really feel her legs while blood trickled from her forehead. Just after these very last two a long time that we have gone by means of,” she continued, “following my illness, it can be legitimate I have been via most cancers, but what I have lived with my mom has been awful. I are unable to demonstrate it since it is something I would under no circumstances desire on any individual and when it can be you who will not go by means of it and are not able to do nearly anything to assist, it’s genuinely tough.”

The good thing is, Torrecilla’s mom is accomplishing properly at residence and her daughter now is familiar with wherever all of her very own energy will come from. “She’s a fighter,” Torrecilla reported with a proud smile, “and everyone who asks exactly where I bought the energy to fight, there it is — it can be my parents.”

Not leaving her father powering, Torrecilla stated how he has performed an vital section these past two yrs, far too. “He is the soul of this relatives. He has normally completed a small little bit of every thing, but I have certainly recognized he is an authentic warrior.”

You’d consider Torrecilla would like to fail to remember the previous couple of years, these issues have been used as prospects for individual progress.

“If I was Virginia 2. just before, now arrives Virginia 4.. I have to have to increase in a whole lot of factors, and I am performing that. I’m not the Virginia I was ahead of. I have enhanced a good deal in so many features, specially on a own level … existence places so quite a few hurdles in your journey [that you must] triumph over them, and I believe I am accomplishing that.”

In January of this yr, Virginia 4. returned to the lovely match. She did it at the Women’s SuperCup Closing among Barcelona and Atletico de Madrid, taking part in her first minutes considering that the analysis. Right after the video game, which Atleti shed, her teammates and Barcelona players alike celebrated Torrecilla’s comeback by tossing her in the air.

“I consider my re-debut that so several folks waited for, that I had dreamed of following remaining off the subject for so very long, was a little something really distinctive and some thing I never ever would have imagined,” she mentioned. “I hardly ever imagined I would go by what I went via and how everybody soon after every little thing supported me and cheered for me the way they did… the way in which the rival workforce did.”

Torrecilla returned to the Spanish league a couple weeks later, though Atletico de Madrid prolonged her agreement by this summer time.

“I know I have to hold working and finding improved,” she mentioned. “I am doing the job to gain minutes on the subject and I’m incredibly satisfied and happy with all the things we’ve completed.”

Profitable minutes with Atletico de Madrid indicates working toward her objective to also return to the countrywide group to engage in for Spain at Euro 2022 this summer season under coach Jorge Vilda. “[He] has been there in the course of my total sickness — not only him, but all of the coaching personnel,” Torrecilla explained. “They have incorporated me in all of their matches with my jersey or my bracelet, and I’ve even been in the pregame chats by FaceTime. I truly take pleasure in it from the base of my coronary heart.”

The previous Spanish captain needs to be thought of for the countrywide workforce purely due to the fact of her capabilities on the area.

“I know they’re waiting around for me. I definitely hope, from the bottom of my coronary heart, I can be [at Euro 2022] on my own terms. I really don’t want people to feel ‘poor Virginia’ for the reason that which is driving me.”

As of this spring, Torrecilla stays most cancers-free of charge and proudly posts consistently on social media about her each day trainings with Atletico de Madrid. It really is a stark distinction to the days when she posted about battling an ailment that failed to prevent her from returning to the match she loves.