Sevilla FC Femenino announced on Friday that Débora García Mateo will not continue with the team next season. The Catalan full-back, one of the captains of the Seville side, brings to an end a five-season spell that began in the summer of 2021.
She leaves with 141 official matches, 2 goals and 9 assists. A journey long enough that her farewell cannot be reduced to just another departure from the squad. The message chosen by the club sums up the bond built over these years: “Seville will always be your home.”
Débora García arrived from RCD Espanyol after an extensive career in the top flight. She had also passed through UE L’Estartit, Atlético de Madrid and Valencia CF. In Nervión she found continuity and ended up becoming one of the recognisable voices of the dressing room.
A footballer still important in her final season
Her farewell does not come after a token campaign. In the 2025/26 Liga F season she played 25 matches, started 22 of them and accumulated 1,906 minutes. She also contributed two assists.
In January 2025 she had reached 100 appearances in the Sevilla shirt. The club honoured her then at the Estadio Jesús Navas, with a framed shirt presented before the derby. By that point she had already scored the two goals she leaves in her final tally.
One of them holds a special place: on 1 March 2022 she settled a Copa de la Reina tie at Lezama against Athletic Club. Sevilla won 0-1 and progressed thanks to a strike from Débora García in the 6th minute. It was not the most important goal in the club’s history, but it was one of those moments a player carries with her when a chapter closes.
Far more than the armband
Her weight in the team cannot be explained through minutes alone either. In an interview published by La Colina de Nervión in September 2024, Débora described herself as a “captain of social events”. There was something of a joke in the phrase, but it also said a good deal about her way of understanding the dressing room: building a group, looking after new arrivals and forging relationships off the pitch in order to compete better on it.
In that same conversation she explained why she had decided to stay in Seville: “I don’t leave a place where I’m happy.” Two years later, her spell ends without either the club or the footballer having yet announced what her next step will be.
Away from football, her path is also out of the ordinary. As the educational organisation Futedu noted when presenting her as a speaker at a conference on women and sport, Débora has combined elite competition with two university degrees: Social Work and Social Education. A long career in the top flight, two degrees and five seasons as a Sevillista allow her farewell to be told from a different angle than usual: not just as the departure of a right-back, but as the end of a relationship that mattered to the dressing room.
A third exit in a week of farewells
Débora García’s departure follows those of Julia Torres — transferred to FC Barcelona in the most expensive deal yet agreed between Liga F clubs — and Chantal Hagel, whose contract expired on 30 June. They are the first moves by Sevilla FC Femenino after closing out the season.
It is still too early to know the scale of the changes. What is already certain is that the team will lose one of its captains, and a footballer who made consistency her principal argument: five seasons, 141 matches and a right flank patrolled to the very last day.
