The Women’s World Cup birthed a new star

When the World Cup comes around, it’s our sacred duty as soccer writers to talk about it. So, in the triumphant return of “Rising Ballers,” today we’re discussing Salma Paralluelo, aka the FIFA Young Player Award winner for the 2023 Women’s World Cup. 

World Cups are often won by a knife’s edge, and if not for Paralluelo, it’s possible that Spain would’ve fallen before the final hurdle (pun intended, as you’ll read later). The 19-year-old winger grew into the competition — not scoring until the quarterfinal — but proved essential throughout the tournament and earned a starting spot in the final against England after coming off the bench in the quarters and semis. 

Even before the World Cup, Paralluelo enjoyed a rapid ascent to stardom during the 2022/23 Liga F season, scoring more goals than she started matches. The past season was Paralluelo’s first with Barcelona, having started her professional career with Villarreal CF’s women’s side, where she scored an outside-the-box banger against Barcelona that earned her a FIFA Puskas Award — given to the best goal of the year — nomination for 2022.

Watching the goal back, you can see how Paralluelo combines audacity and efficiency. On the one hand, performing a drag back that removes two Barcelona defenders from the play and then hitting a curler into the top left corner from over 20 yards requires supreme confidence, almost overconfidence. But the drag back that opens the space also makes sense. Paralluelo sees the Barcelona defenders coming to restrict her space, so she flicks the ball in the other direction and runs away. It’s simple, it’s beautiful and it’s cocky.  

Alongside her technical proficiency, Paralluelo’s pace leaps off the screen when you watch her. That’s for good reason, too, as she’s competed in track and field competitions at the highest level. Paralluelo earned a place at the 2019 European Indoor Athletics Championships in the 400-meter division at just 15 years old. She continued to train and compete in track until she signed for Barcelona. 

On the pitch, she also has a grace and efficiency of movement that I’ll attribute to her side gig as a track star. Paralluelo displayed that movement control against the Netherlands in the World Cup quarter-final, where she scored the winning goal in extra time to send Spain to the semis. 

In the 110th minute, Paralluelo received the ball on the counterattack off a through ball from midfielder Jennifer Hermoso and ran directly at Dutch defender Aniek Nouwen. Paralluelo’s run left Nouwen in a tricky situation because she invited Nouwen to make a tackle while also leaving herself enough room to run around Nouwen’s left and create a shot. 

Ultimately, Nouwen kept backing up and Paralluelo did a simple stepover to her left to score, but the mere threat of Paralluelo’s speed scared Nouwen into backing down. Even though she probably has the fastest sprint speed on the field, Paralluelo doesn’t always need it to be effective. 

While Paralluelo’s rise during this World Cup may have been unexpected for more casual fans, she delivered on a year’s worth of hype in the buildup to the tournament. Paralluelo won the Women’s World Cup at U-17 and U-20 levels with Spain in 2018 and 2022, respectively, in addition to the 2018 UEFA Women’s European Championship. She scored two goals in the U-20 World Cup final and even posted a hat trick in her first senior cap against fellow World Cup contenders Argentina. 

The one slight concern about Paralluelo is that her underlying numbers have yet to match her actual output. You may call me a nerd for caring more about “fake” (expected) goals than “real” goals, but when a player has both high expected output and real output, it suggests they can sustain their statistics across multiple seasons. 

Non-penalty expected goals plus assists (npxG+xA, for short) can also predict things to come for young players. For example, Real Madrid’s Vinicius Júnior accumulated 11.3 npxG+xA in the 2020-21 season but had only six combined goals and assists, an underwhelming total for a much-hyped player. The next season, however, he had 27 goals plus assists with a npxG+xA of 20.3. His underperformance in 2021-22 suggested he had room to grow, which proved correct. 

On the contrary, Paralluelo’s 15 goal involvements from 10.5 npxG+xA in 2022-23 means that she might have overperformed, given the quality of her shots and the shots she created. Great players can overperform their npxG+xA most years (Messi has every season since 2017-18), but it takes time to establish that trend.

To be fair, I’m nitpicking here. Even if she did overperform, 10 goals and assists would still be a great tally for a teenager, especially since Barcelona women’s team head coach Jonatan Giráldez used Paralluelo in a different role almost every match. Sometimes, she played through the middle as a striker, other times, she played on the right or left wing. Sometimes Paralluelo came off the bench, but she also started the Women’s Champions League final, which Barcelona won. She deserves praise for her flexibility, but it also begs the question: If she started in the same position every week, would Paralluelo score and assist even more?

Paralluelo has already proven she can have a long and illustrious professional career. With Spain and Barcelona, the sky is truly the limit. She could win Ballon d’Ors, Champions Leagues and perhaps another World Cup. Given the longevity of women’s players like Marta and Christine Sinclair, we might still be watching Paralluelo at the 2043 Women’s World Cup. 

Jack Hallinan is a junior writing about the top wonderkids in men’s and women’s soccer in his column, “Rising Ballers,” which runs every other Thursday.