Ainhoa Marín had already played at Zubieta before she became a Real Sociedad footballer.
She did so during her formative years, when she took part in the Donosti Cup and that training complex was just one of the venues in a summer tournament. This Wednesday she returned to sign until 2028 with the club that finished third in Liga F and will compete in the next Champions League.
Between those two visits lies almost her entire career.
The Barcelona academy, her debut in the top flight with Espanyol, a Under-17 World Cup she had to leave through injury, a season at Seagull, five years in A Coruña, a promotion, two survival campaigns and hundreds of attempted dribbles.
Ainhoa returns to the same place. The footballer who arrives is not the same one who left.
A champion who missed the final
Born in Badalona in 2001, she began playing football at Unificació Llefià before joining Barcelona’s youth academy in 2013. She spent five years in the club’s structure and reached the reserve side, but her debut in the top flight came after leaving the club.
Espanyol signed her in the summer of 2018. In September of that same year, aged 17, she made her Primera División debut against Valencia.
A few weeks later she travelled to Uruguay for the Under-17 World Cup with Spain. She came off the bench in the opening 0–4 win over South Korea, but a grade II sprain of the external ligament in her right ankle forced her to leave the squad before the group stage was complete.
Spain went on to be crowned world champions. Marín had been part of that squad, though she had to watch the decisive stages of the tournament from home.
The title that should have confirmed her progress became instead one of the first reminders that a career does not always move in a straight line.
Leaving the top flight to return to it
Ainhoa spent two seasons at Espanyol. She scored her first Primera División goal against EDF Logroño during the 2019/20 campaign, but left the club when that season ended.
Her next team was CE Seagull.
The move took her away from the top flight and brought her back to Badalona, but it also offered minutes and a space to rebuild her continuity. It was not a final destination. It was the intermediate stage between the player who had been considered a promising talent and the one who still had to construct herself.
In 2021 she received a call from Dépor ABANCA.
The Galician club had just been relegated and were looking for players to help them return to the top flight. Marín was 20, had experience in the élite and something to prove. The club needed to win promotion. She needed to come back.
The agreement lasted five seasons.
Five years to return
Ainhoa established herself quickly in Dépor’s attack. In her first season she was one of the players with most minutes, and in her second she reached double figures in league goals, but promotion proved elusive.
She also had to compete through physical problems. In 2023 she admitted she had been playing with a damaged meniscus for two months while the team was navigating the decisive stretch of the season.
Dépor missed out on Liga F again.
The reward came a year later.
On 21 April 2024, more than 14,000 people came to Riazor to see the team face Cacereño. The Galician side needed to win to confirm promotion mathematically and Ainhoa Marín opened the scoring in a match that finished 3–1.
After leaving the top flight, passing through Seagull and waiting three seasons in A Coruña, she was back in the top division, scoring one of the most important goals in the club’s recent history.
She had not found a short cut. She had found a path.
The player who dribbles
Returning to Liga F did not make Marín a cautious footballer.
Her main quality remained the same: receive the ball, look at the defence and try. Once. And again. Even if she lost it. Even if the first attempt did not come off.
During the 2024/25 season she ranked among the most frequent dribblers in the entire competition. It was not simply an entertaining way to play. Her ability to beat opponents became Dépor’s main mechanism for moving forward when the team could not find space.
Ainhoa has explained that her father showed her videos of Johan Cruyff and that Ronaldinho was one of her earliest points of reference. Her number 14 shirt was no coincidence either. Over time she added Caroline Graham Hansen as a model for interpreting a position where talent must coexist with decision-making.
In December 2024 she renewed her contract with Deportivo until 2028. She had already played more than a hundred matches in white and blue, had been part of the promotion side and was beginning to show that her game could also be a decisive factor in the top flight.
But her best season was still to come.
Thirty matches to take the next step
In her second Liga F season, 2025/26, Ainhoa Marín played in all 30 matches of the campaign. She accumulated 2,655 minutes, scored six goals and contributed five assists.
By early April she was the player with the most minutes of any footballer in Liga F. She finished the season having been directly involved in eleven goals for a Deportivo side that secured another season in the top flight.
She kept on dribbling too.
She attempted more than a hundred dribbles and finished as one of the two Liga F players who sought to beat a rival most often. The statistic captures her style, but also her character: Ainhoa does not wait for the match to offer her an advantage. She tries to create one.
Real Sociedad are not simply signing an attacker who has just posted her best numbers in the top flight. They are signing a footballer capable of breaking games open from the wing, comfortable on either flank, and willing to take on the responsibility of generating play when space disappears.
She arrives ready for a different context.
In A Coruña she helped a team fighting to return to the top flight and then fighting to stay there. In San Sebastián she will join a squad that finished third, scored 61 goals and will face the European challenge.
Leaving A Coruña
The departure carries an important detail: Marín had renewed her contract with Dépor until 2028.
Neither Deportivo nor Real Sociedad have publicly disclosed the financial terms of the operation. What is confirmed is that the attacker has ended her time in A Coruña after five seasons and signs with the txuri-urdin side until the end of the 2027/28 campaign.
She leaves having accompanied the club through almost the entire journey: the reconstruction in the second tier, the failed promotion bids, the return to Liga F and two consecutive survival campaigns.
She also leaves at the moment when her performances were demanding to find out how far she could go at a club positioned at the top end of the table.
She is not leaving Dépor because her time there failed. She can take the next step precisely because it worked.
The long way leads to Europe
Real Sociedad have presented Ainhoa Marín as a new threat to their attack.
The description suits a player who has built her career around the one-versus-one, but her story explains something beyond a technical quality.
Marín was a girl in the Barcelona academy, debuted in the top flight at 17 and was part of a world-champion Spain squad. Then she left the élite, dropped down a level and needed four seasons to return.
When she did, she did not settle for simply being back.
She became one of the attackers who plays most minutes, dribbles most often and takes on most responsibility in Liga F. That journey is what now takes her to a Champions League club.
Ainhoa Marín already knew Zubieta. The first time she came, it was for a youth tournament.
Now she returns the long way round. And she returns to play in Europe.