Atletico Madrid's Virginia Torrecilla on cancer fight, parents' support and message to women
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Updated 08/03/2023 at 21:35 GMT
Atletico Madrid's Virginia Torrecilla discusses her fight against cancer, being in a car crash with her mum, and why sport has been so important in her life. Torrecilla, 28, was diagnosed with cancer in the spring of 2020 and didn't return to play for Atletico until January 2022. On International Women's Day, Torrecilla paid tribute to her parents for their support.
Torcellina on cancer battle and 'taking five steps back' after mother's car accident
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The last few years have been challenging for Virginia Torrecilla, to say the least.
It all started when the Atletico Madrid midfielder began to suffer headaches in the spring of 2020, around the time the Covid-19 pandemic started.
She was diagnosed with a tumour, which was initially classified as benign.
But it was in fact cancerous.
Torrecilla underwent 13 months of treatment, including radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
She returned to training in March 2021. Not long afterwards she was involved in a car crash that left her mother, Mari, paralysed from the waist down and in a wheelchair.
Although Torrecilla was unhurt in the crash, it was unclear after her cancer diagnosis whether she would ever return to play football again.
But in January 2022, 683 days after her last match, she returned for Atletico in the Spanish Super Cup final.
Speaking on International Women’s Day, Torrecilla, 28, says it is “thanks to sport I am here today”.
“Sport has changed me completely,” she told Eurosport Spain.
“Thanks to sport, I have been taught to have a goal to improve myself and always surpass what you do well. It's very important. A person who has not played sports doesn’t have those principles.
“Thanks to sport I am here today. There's no doubt.”
Torrecilla, who was voted Guardian Footballer of the Year for 2022, was part of Spain’s squad at the 2015 and 2019 World Cups.
Her return in the Spanish Super Cup final was greeted in celebratory fashion as she was tossed in the air afterwards by team-mates and Barcelona players.
“I wouldn’t have been able to be who I am without my parents,” she says.
“They have had to take me hundreds of kilometres to go to training, come back at night and they work in the morning and thanks to them I'm the player that I am because of the efforts of my family.
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Virginia Torrecilla (Montpellier)
Image credit: Getty Images
“You always associate me with the fight against cancer, it was hard. But what I've had to work with is my mother's accident. That's when I realise I've taken five steps back, that's when I focus on football.
“I had to go back to being the Virginia that I was for my parents, for my mother who will no longer be able to walk, and for my father for all the times he has seen me cry.”
International Women’s Day is a day to “celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women”.
Asked what her message would be to women, Torrecilla says: “I would tell them to enjoy their day-to-day.
“If they really like something, they should work on it, maybe the road is hard but that they try to overcome it that always reaching the end is very nice. Everything that surrounds you afterwards will be much better.”
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