Celia Segura has spent years being described as a player for the future. Atlético de Madrid have brought her in to discover how much she can offer already.
The forward will spend the 2026/27 season on loan at Atlético after the club reached an agreement with Barcelona. Before allowing her to leave, Barça extended her contract until 2029. The move carries two complementary messages: Barcelona do not want to lose her, but could not yet offer her the space she needs to compete regularly in Liga F.
At 19, Segura is leaving the environment in which she has spent almost her entire career for the first time.
She made her Barcelona B debut during the 2022/23 season, when she was 15, and has spent most of the time since then with the reserve team. Last season, she made 23 appearances in Primera Federación, started 21 of them and scored ten goals. She also featured in friendlies and made her official first-team debut in the Copa Catalunya, but had yet to play in Liga F.
The question was no longer whether she could continue to stand out at youth and reserve-team level. It was where she could find the minutes required to stop being seen only as a prospect.
“It is the first time I have left home, and it is a very important challenge for me,” she said after completing her move to Atlético. The words describe more than a change of city. Celia is leaving a club where she knows the training sessions, her teammates, the coaches and every stage of the route through the academy to join a squad in which she will have to earn her place from the beginning.
Her career has been accompanied from a very early age by a number that has proved difficult to leave behind.
Segura scored 121 goals during the 2018/19 season with Barcelona’s under-12 team. The tally became a La Masia record and eventually began to function almost as part of her name. Years later, she started to distance herself from it: those 121 goals explained the child she had been, but could not define on their own the footballer trying to reach the first team.
Her game also changed during that journey. She can play as a centre-forward, start from either wing and contribute away from the penalty area. She remains a goalscorer, but no longer relies solely on goals: she exchanges positions, combines with her teammates and can attack from different areas.
The Spanish national team has allowed her to demonstrate that development while waiting for a stable opportunity in a first-team squad.
Celia joins Atlético after winning her second consecutive European Under-19 Championship. She scored against Iceland during the group stage and started the final against Germany, creating several of Spain’s early chances from the right before being substituted in the 74th minute. Spain won 0-1 to secure a fifth successive title in the competition.
None of that guarantees her minutes in Madrid. Atlético are not bringing in the memory of those 121 goals or the reputation of one of the leading forwards in Spanish youth football. They are bringing in a player who must transfer everything she has learned to a competition that is faster, more physical and less patient.
From now on, her development will no longer be measured by how much she promises, but by the space she can earn in Liga F.
