For three days, Sevilla FC’s José Ramón Cisneros Palacios training complex has hosted something Spanish women’s football had needed for a while: a tournament designed, from start to finish, for the ones coming through. The first Liga Futura Moeve —twelve under-12 academies from Liga F clubs, 144 players and 28 matches— now has a champion.
It is FC Badalona Women, who beat Atlético de Madrid on penalties after a 0-0 in the grand final played this Sunday at midday. With no extra time —the tournament’s rules go straight to a shootout when the scores are level— it was the Catalans who held their nerve through a marathon shootout, won 7-6, to lift the first title in the competition’s history.
If you want to go back over every result, the standings in all three groups and the full knockout bracket, you will find them on our Liga Futura Moeve results page (in Spanish), which we updated throughout the weekend.
The road to the final
Neither finalist got there by chance. FC Badalona Women topped a tight Group A and then survived two nerve-shredding rounds: a quarter-final against hosts Sevilla FC settled on penalties (0-0, 3-2), and an end-to-end semi-final against Levante UD that they won 3-2. The final, once again from twelve yards, was almost a summary of their tournament: Badalona’s was a triumph forged in the small details and in nerves of steel.
Atlético de Madrid took the noisiest route. After finishing second in the group behind Badalona themselves, they knocked out Athletic Club in the quarters (0-1) and pulled off the shock of the tournament in the semis, beating FC Barcelona (1-2) —the side that had arrived with a perfect record and the best goal difference in the competition. The favourites fell at the last step before the final, and that one fact tells you much of what these three days were about: the team marked down to win did not win here.
The individual awards
The tournament also put a name and a face to the best talent of these three days. The top scorer and tournament MVP was Amalia Garewal, a forward for the champions Badalona themselves, with six goals in six matches —a detail that ties the title even more closely to the Catalans’ collective work. The best goalkeeper award went to Gretta of Atlético de Madrid, who conceded just one goal in five games.
The other final: the Plata phase
The format was designed so that elimination would not be the end of the party, and it worked. The teams knocked out of the title race played their own consolation bracket, the Plata phase, with its own semi-finals and final. That second competition was won by Madrid CFF, who beat Deportivo Abanca on penalties (1-1, 2-1) after a tournament in which their academy once again stood up to be counted.
The fact that every girl who travelled to Seville played right up to Sunday is no small thing. At this age, minutes on the pitch matter as much as trophies.
What the first edition leaves behind
Beyond the champion’s name, the first Liga Futura Moeve leaves one certainty: girls’ grassroots football can handle a big stage perfectly well. For three days it could be followed on RTVE Play, TVG, the Liga F channel and several regional broadcasters —the same window that until recently was reserved for the elite. That an under-12 final should be decided by a 7-6 penalty shootout broadcast live would have sounded like science fiction not so long ago.
Barça’s exit in the semis and Badalona’s title are also a reminder of something worth keeping in mind at this age: the result matters less than the fact that these players competed wearing a professional badge, in front of people who came to the ground to watch them. Not as the warm-up act for someone else’s show. As footballers.
As we explained in our piece on why this tournament exists, the Liga Futura does not solve grassroots football’s problems on its own: it does not create teams where there are none, nor does it correct the gap in resources between academies. But it adds what was missing for far too long —structure, visibility, recognition— and it does so in the same year the 2023 world champions keep proving which academies they came from.
The Liga Futura Moeve honours list starts today with a single name: FC Badalona Women. We will have to wait and see how many of the players who lifted that trophy —or lost it on penalties— end up, a few years from now, playing in Liga F for real. If 70% of the professional league’s footballers come through the youth ranks, as its president pointed out, some of them were already in Seville this weekend.
And we were watching.