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Lucía Rivas started playing football during half-time.
She was five years old and went with her father to watch his veterans’ team, Caldas, play. While the older players left the pitch, she would go on with her friends. There was no academy, no trial, no decision about the future. Just a girl waiting for the break so she could play.
“I started playing at five during my dad’s matches at half-time,” she said in May 2024.
The following year she joined Caldas. She stayed for three seasons before moving on to Atlético Cuntis, where she played in mixed teams, went to tournaments and began to appear in regional representative squads.
Long before Deportivo, the Spanish national teams and Liga F, there were those borrowed minutes during her father’s games.
From Caldas to Abegondo
Lucía Rivas Moure was born on 23 August 2007 in Caldas de Reis. She joined Deportivo’s academy structure during the 2021/22 season, aged fourteen.
The following year she competed under an Orzán licence and was part of the teams that won the Galician under-16 league and the A Coruña under-18 cup. The journey from mixed football to one of Galicia’s leading women’s academies was beginning to shorten.
Her position was clear to her. In an interview given when she was 16, she described herself as a left winger and chose four words to sum herself up: fast, unbalancing, decisive and generous.
The last word said as much as the other three.
“The important thing is to win, not who scores the goal,” she explained.
On 7 January 2024 she made her debut for Deportivo’s first team against Alba Fundación. Irene Ferreras named her in the starting XI and Lucía went on to play eight more Primera Federación matches. She finished that first experience with 222 minutes at second-division level.
She was 16 years old and already part of a team chasing a return to the top flight.
A promotion and a European title
Deportivo confirmed their promotion to Liga F on 21 April 2024. They beat Cacereño 3-1 in front of 14,057 people at Riazor — the largest attendance ever recorded at that level of the women’s game.
Lucía did not play in the decisive match, but she had featured during the season that brought the club back to the top flight. That promotion seemed to open the door to competing at the highest level the following season.
First she had another tournament to play.
In May she travelled to Sweden with the Spanish Under-17 side for the European Championship. She played in three of the five matches and started against Belgium in the final group stage fixture.
She played 72 minutes. She attacked from the left, repeatedly found space in behind, drove inside and looked for goal. Spain won 0-5.
Lucía did not play in the final against England. She would later acknowledge that she had not had minutes in every match and that she needed to understand her role within the team. She felt, even so, that she had made the most of the time she was given.
Spain won 0-4 and were crowned European champions.
Within a few months, Lucía had debuted for Deportivo, been part of a promotion to Liga F and won a continental title. Her goal for the new season was to keep learning, get more minutes with the first team and establish herself in the top flight.
Everything seemed to be pointing in that direction.
Twelve minutes
Lucía turned 17 on 23 August 2024.
The following day she started against Valencia in the Trofeo Ciudad de Salamanca, a pre-season friendly. Deportivo were preparing for their return to Liga F and she was trying to earn a place in the squad that would compete in the top division.
Her match lasted twelve minutes.
The injury was a torn anterior cruciate ligament. She had to have surgery and missed the season that was supposed to mark her introduction to the top flight.
Lucía had arrived at Liga F with Deportivo, but she would not be able to play in it.
Two months later, while she was still at the start of her recovery, the club extended her contract until 2027. Deportivo were backing her without yet knowing when she would return or in what condition.
During the 2024/25 season she did not play a single official match.
While her teammates competed for survival, her calendar looked different. It was not divided into matchdays and there was no league table to measure progress by. Her return depended on a long recovery whose end could not be fixed from the outset.
421 days
Lucía returned to competitive football on 19 October 2025.
421 days had passed since the injury in Salamanca. She came on in the second half of a Segunda Federación match between Racing Féminas and Deportivo B.
The match ended in a 1-0 defeat. For her, the result sat alongside another piece of news: she was back on a team sheet and playing official minutes.
The return to the first team was not immediate. First she needed to regain match sharpness with the reserve side. Then she played in the Copa de la Reina against Guiniguada Apolinario and took a place on the bench in a Liga F match against Levante.
On 22 November, Fran Alonso brought her on in the closing minutes of the match against Sevilla.
Deportivo were losing 3-1 and there was barely any time left. Lucía had no room to change the match, but the moment meant something she had been waiting more than a year for: her Liga F debut.
She had reached the division through promotion in 2024. Now she had arrived there for the second time.
The first start
The chance to begin a match came on 25 January 2026.
Deportivo were visiting DUX Logroño at Las Gaunas. Lucía started as a winger in her first Liga F start, 98 days after returning to competitive football with the reserve side.
Dépor won 0-4.
Lucía assisted Paula Gutiérrez for the second goal and scored the fourth in the 64th minute. Her first appearance in a top-flight starting XI ended with her first goal and her first assist.
Fran Alonso praised her bravery afterwards, her willingness to take on one-v-ones and everything she had contributed to the team.
The injury explained the journey to that afternoon, but not the match she played. Lucía was not in the starting XI as recognition for what she had been through. She started to attack, to unbalance the opposition and to help Deportivo win.
She finished the season with 14 Liga F appearances, five as a starter, and one goal. She also played eleven matches for Deportivo B, starting eight, while the reserve side fought to stay in Segunda Federación.
Her return was not reduced to an emotional moment of reappearing. She went back to the reserves, worked her way into the first team and became a genuine part of the squad’s rotation.
Returning with Spain too
The injury had also interrupted her international progress.
Lucía had already been called up by the Under-16 side and had been crowned Under-17 European champion. But the year away from competitive football took her out of age groups where each season brings a new generation and each camp can open or close a door.
Her first call-up to the Under-19 side came in January 2026, three months after her return. She was called up again in February and March and was included in the squad for the decisive qualifying round.
She played the second half against Hungary and came on after the break against Northern Ireland. Spain won both matches 3-0 and secured their place in the final tournament.
David Aznar included her among the twenty players chosen to defend Spain’s four consecutive European titles in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The national team had found her again too.
A confirmed bet
On 25 June 2026, three days before Spain’s opening match at the Under-19 European Championship, Deportivo announced the extension of her contract until 2028, with an option to extend further.
The renewal included another step forward: Lucía will officially hold a first-team registration.
The club had already backed her during the injury, renewing her contract until 2027 before seeing her return. The new extension came after she had come back, made her Liga F debut, scored in her first start and reclaimed her place in the national youth setups.
The first renewal was a statement of faith.
The second was a confirmation.
Arriving twice
Academy careers are usually presented as an upward line: the first club, the development years, the reserve team, the debut and the top flight.
Lucía Rivas’s stopped being linear when she was 17.
She had debuted for Deportivo, been part of a promotion and won a European title. When the top division seemed like the next step, she had to go back to the operating theatre, to rehabilitation, to the reserve team and to the closing minutes of a match that was already decided.
She won back each space that had seemed within reach, one by one.
Now she arrives at the Under-19 European Championship at 18, with Liga F experience and a contract that makes her a full member of Deportivo’s first-team squad. She is still at the very start of her career and there are no guarantees about how far she will go.
But there is something that already defines her.
Lucía Rivas reached the top flight twice.
The second time, she scored.