Some departures force a club to look for a replacement. Others force it to ask who will tell the dressing room’s story once the door closes behind them.
In little more than a fortnight, Granada CF Femenino have announced the departures of Lauri Requena, Laura Pérez and Alba Pérez. Three captains. Three careers that began when the red-and-white section was still learning to find its way in a women’s game very different from today’s. More than 880 official matches between them. Almost four decades of service if their individual seasons are added together.
This is no ordinary farewell. Nor should it tip into easy melodrama: Granada are not a team falling apart after a poor season. Quite the opposite. The side managed by Irene Ferreras have just finished sixth in Liga F with 45 points, matching the best league tally in their history. By March they had already secured survival with seven matchdays to spare — earlier than ever before.
That is precisely why these three exits matter so much. Granada must rebuild at a moment when they are no longer fighting merely to survive, but to prove their growth can continue without some of the players who made it possible.
Lauri, the captain who stayed to come back
Lauri Requena arrived in Granada in 2013 from Fundación Albacete. The red-and-white side had just been promoted to the top flight for the first time. The adventure lasted one season: Granada went down, but she stayed.
She stayed through the years that followed too, when a return to the top division felt like a promise postponed again and again. She lived through the modest grounds, the awkward kick-off times and the slow growth of a section still a long way from the professional structure we know today. Until promotion finally came in 2023, nine seasons after relegation, against Deportivo ABANCA.
She was no bystander in that story. In the first leg of the play-off, at Los Cármenes, Lauri scored Granada’s opening goal. A year later she appeared at another decisive moment: she opened the scoring at Ipurúa in the match that sealed Granada’s first survival in the elite.
The club announced her departure with 361 official matches to her name, though two fixtures still remained. She played both. She leaves as the player with the most appearances in the section’s history, as Granada’s record appearance-maker in Liga F and as the club’s second-highest scorer in the top flight, with 22 goals.
At her farewell, held on her 36th birthday, Lauri avoided talking only about numbers. She remembered the hard years, thanked those who shared the journey and explained that she needed to close one chapter in order to live new things. She has not yet announced her next step. She did leave open the possibility of returning to the club one day in another role.
Some footballers pass through a team. Lauri helped hold this one up while it was still trying to become what it is now.
Laura Pérez, growing up with her hometown club
Laura Pérez also arrived in 2013. She was 15 and came from Ogíjares 89. At her first training session, as she recalled recently, every player wore her own kit: the only instruction was that it had to be red.
Shortly afterwards she became the youngest player ever to make her debut for Granada Femenino in the top flight: 15 years and 85 days. Thirteen seasons later, she leaves with 294 official matches and 98 goals. She is the fourth player with the most appearances in the section’s history and one of the footballers who best explain the club’s transformation.
Laura lived through the relegation, the years of waiting, the 2023 promotion and the three consecutive survivals that followed. She was also one of the protagonists of Granada’s consolidation on the pitch. In the season just finished she contributed six goals and seven assists across all competitions. In March she scored in the 90th minute against Deportivo ABANCA to turn mathematical survival into a celebration on the grass.
Her story carries an added meaning: she did not arrive from elsewhere and build a bond with Granada. She was a girl from Granada who dreamed of playing for her city’s team at a time when it was hard to imagine how far that team could go.
“This will always be my home,” she said at her farewell. Her wish for the future is not only about results either: she hopes to return one day and find many more girls dreaming of taking the place she leaves behind.
Alba Pérez, from the academy to the captaincy
Alba Pérez represents another strand of the same process. She arrived in 2014, still at under-16 level, from Arenas de Armilla. She made her first-team debut in 2016 and closes her red-and-white chapter after twelve seasons and 225 official matches.
Her career helps explain how Granada were built from within. There was no instant breakthrough, no straight line. She came through the academy, established herself in the first team and kept adapting to the needs of each era. A winger in her early years, a full-back later and a left-sided centre-back this past season, she ended up becoming one of the captains and one of the team’s most dependable players.
Alba was an important piece in the 2023 promotion and leaves the club among the seven players with the most appearances in the section’s history. Her 225 outings break down into 83 in Liga F, 128 in Primera RFEF and 14 in the Copa de la Reina. Alongside Lauri, she is also the Granada player with the most matches at Los Cármenes.
Only a few months ago she summed up her relationship with the club in a line that is hard to better: “No money is worth what this club makes me feel.”
The price of growing
Granada have come a long way in a very short time. They returned to the top flight in 2023, scraped survival in their first season, finished fifth and reached the Copa de la Reina semi-finals in their second, and have just closed a third consecutive campaign in the elite with sixth place and 45 points.
The challenge that begins now is different. It is no longer simply about competing every weekend. The club must also rebuild a dressing room that is losing sporting reference points, internal leadership and collective memory.
The three departures are not identical. Lauri arrived from Caudete and made Granada her home. Laura Pérez grew up chasing the chance to represent her city. Alba Pérez walked the road from the academy to the captaincy. But all three helped build the same bridge: the one that allowed Granada to stop thinking only about returning to the top flight and start asking how far they could go in it.
The market will decide which players take their positions. Time will decide who carries their weight inside the dressing room.
What we already know is that next season’s Granada cannot be quite the same. Because a shirt can be handed to another footballer. Foundations, though, leave their mark even when they are gone.
