Mapi León

“There is always room for improvement, always. Everything can be improved.”

“I always want to win no matter what.”

“I have always been very competitive so when it comes to motivation, I haven’t really needed much motivation other than wanting to win.”

“At the end of the day is all about being yourself and feeling comfortable in your own skin.”

“There are people that don’t know how to find their identity and the things they like, you need to experiment, try new things. Try new clothes, try a new hairstyle, but most importantly have what ever makes you comfortable.”

“I think it is essential, you are never going to be more real than being yourself.”

“I started gaining confidence as I have grown up, I gained experience, I gained moments, which when you find yourself in that situation again you know what to expect, you know how to act and how to resolve it.”

“At the end of the day, the life of a sportsperson is relatively short, we invest so many hours on it.”

“When you are younger you obviously have different taste and likes than when you are an adult.”

“See, while football is a team game, and any achievement within it is reliant on working as a group, no matter which way you flip it it’s still made up of individuals – success is just based on whether these individuals manage to form a cohesive unit.”

“My job is to play football and these are details that I shouldn’t get involved in but people in power who organise things make it [running women’s football] more complicated than it is.”

“When you miss what you love the most, you start to value other things much more.”

“There is no secret, it is of all of us: we always want to win. It’s ambition. I want to win every game, I train a lot for it.”

“It doesn’t mean that I am overly cautious at every meal, it means that if I have had a bad dinner, the next day I have to take good care of myself. It’s not that I’m strict, it’s that I try to take care of myself.”

“Nowadays you have a lot of tools and a better economy to be able to take good care of yourself, not before.”

“Ultimately, when things start to improve, your ambitions do, too.”