Mapi Vilas never announced her retirement.
She played her final Liga F match in 2023, after seventeen seasons in the Spanish top flight. Three years later, she is still playing for PIO.
She exchanged eleven-a-side football for the seven-a-side game, professional clubs for teams led by content creators and traditional rules for cards, dice and double goals.
She did not lose her instinct.
The forward who ended her time in the top flight with 230 goals was named the Queens League’s best player, scored four times in a final and continued to receive offers to return to professional football.
She was the same player who had once scored seven goals for Spain in 47 minutes.
The same player who never played at a World Cup.
Seven goals in 47 minutes
Spain went into their match against Kazakhstan after losing 5–0 to Germany.
They needed to recover to protect second place in their group and keep alive their hopes of qualifying for Women’s EURO 2013. Kazakhstan resisted for nineteen minutes before Vero Boquete converted a penalty.
Sonia Bermúdez and Priscila Borja extended the lead before Mapi took over.
The Espanyol forward scored in the 31st, 37th and 44th minutes. She completed her hat-trick before half-time and needed only fifteen minutes of the second half to reach six goals.
After Marta Torrejón scored Spain’s twelfth, Mapi completed the 13–0 victory in the 78th minute.
She had scored with her head, finished crosses, converted rebounds and even turned in the rebound from her own shot against the crossbar.
Her seven goals established a record in European competition. The RFEF also recognises Mapi and Mari Mar Prieto as the two players to have scored the most goals in a single match for Spain.
No Spanish player has surpassed that figure in an official international since.
Mapi did not stop there.
She scored again against Switzerland and twice against Turkey in Spain’s next two qualifiers. Between April and June 2012, she registered ten goals in three competitive internationals.
The Galician featured in the final group match but was not selected for the play-off against Scotland. Spain secured their first European Championship appearance since 1997 with an extra-time victory.
Mapi was also omitted from the final squad for the tournament.
Missing the first World Cup
Her absence began a period of almost three years without playing for Spain.
During that time, the national team qualified for their first World Cup. They did so without Mapi featuring in any of their qualifiers.
The forward was not selected for Canada 2015 either.
She missed out while completing her second season with Valencia. The team finished fourth in the league and reached the Copa de la Reina final for the first time.
Her return came after the World Cup.
Jorge Vilda called her up for two friendlies against China in September 2015. Mapi played for Spain again three years after her previous appearance.
This time, she reached a major tournament.
She was part of Spain’s squad for Women’s EURO 2017 in the Netherlands and played 182 minutes. Spain progressed from the group stage before losing to Austria on penalties in the quarter-finals.
Mapi remained involved during qualifying for the World Cup in France.
Her fifteenth and final international goal arrived against Israel on 7 June 2018 in a World Cup qualifier. Spain won 2–0 and eventually secured their place at France 2019.
The forward was again left out of the final squad.
She ended her Spain career with 15 goals. Seven of them had come on a single morning.
A goalscorer from the age of seven
Mapi’s relationship with goals had begun much earlier.
Born in Vilagarcía de Arousa in 1988, she started playing at the age of seven in Arosa’s mixed teams. She later joined Atlético Arousana before leaving Galicia to sign for Levante in 2006.
She was eighteen.
During two seasons with Levante, she won the Copa de la Reina and the league. She then spent three years at Barcelona and lifted another Copa in 2011.
Espanyol became her next destination.
She produced one of the finest seasons of her career there and scored the winning goal in a final. In 2012, she found the net against Athletic Club in the 115th minute to deliver Espanyol’s sixth Copa de la Reina.
One year later, she began the spell that would come to define her career.
Mapi joined Valencia in 2013 and remained for seven seasons. She scored 132 goals in 195 competitive appearances to become the team’s all-time leading scorer.
Her total also surpassed the 129 goals David Villa had scored for the men’s side.
She registered 31 goals across the league and Copa in 2016/17. In January 2018, she reached a century for Valencia with a hat-trick against Real Sociedad.
Her time at the club ended in 2020 when Valencia decided not to renew her contract. Mapi later admitted that she would have liked to retire there.
She went on to spend two seasons at Betis and one more at Levante Las Planas. In her final Liga F campaign, she played 26 matches, started 22 and scored four goals.
She ended her time in the Spanish top flight with 230 goals.
She did not end her career.
Another kind of football
In May 2023, while still a Levante Las Planas player, Mapi became the first active professional footballer to compete in the Queens League.
Porcinas signed her as their Player 12. The proposal arrived after a difficult season and just as she was due to begin her holidays, but it also offered her the chance to play alongside one of her friends, Sara Mérida.
She accepted.
“The Queens League brought out my inner child,” she explained during that first summer.
Mapi left Levante Las Planas at the end of the season. She received offers to return to Liga F but chose to remain in a competition where she had rediscovered her enjoyment of the game.
Her first year ended with the Kingdom Cup title, the top scorer award and the Golden Crown as the Queens League’s best player.
She left Porcinas at the end of 2024 and joined PIO.
In May 2025, she dominated another final. Mapi scored four times in a 6–5 victory over Kunitas, was named MVP and helped PIO become the first team to win two titles in the competition.
Later that year, she also helped the club win the international Queens Cup in Mexico. Mapi scored again in the final.
She remains part of PIO’s squad in 2026. Alongside her playing career, she works as director of women’s football at RCG Sports, a player representation agency.
She is 38.
More than fourteen years have passed since the morning when she scored seven goals for Spain. More than three years have passed since her final Liga F appearance.
Mapi Vilas never made it to a World Cup.
She did not retire either.
She found another kind of football.
