Martina Fernández (footballer)

Martina Fernández Vila (born 1 October 2004) is a Spanish footballer who plays as a defender or midfielder for Liga F club Barcelona and Spain under-23. She also captains Barcelona Femení B.

Early and personal life
Martina Fernández Vila was born on 1 October 2004 and is from Ordis in the Province of Girona, Catalonia. She grew up near to her maternal grandparents, with whom she maintains a close relationship.

She began studying biomedicine but, in 2023, stopped pursuing this as a career to focus on football. As of 2024, she continues part-time study at a biomedical laboratory.

Borrassà and Girona
Fernández' first sport was tennis, but she told her mother that she preferred football; her mother looked for ways to enable this and went to the football club in the next town, Borrassà. Though the girls' team was fully subscribed, the coach allowed Fernández to take part in a trial session with the boys' team at her mother's insistence: after three sessions, the coach promised to sign her. She spent three years at Borrassà before signing for Girona FC Femení B.

At Girona, she played with the second team (considered its youth cadet team, generally 19-year-olds) from the start, rather than age group teams, staying for two seasons.

Barcelona
Fernández joined Barcelona in the women's youth section in 2018. In her first year with the club she stayed with her family in the province of Girona, over 150 km from Barcelona, and travelled with other players to train. Often ignoring the toll this took, her family then asked that she be supported to live at a school in Barcelona; after half a season of this situation, the COVID-19 pandemic forced her back to Ordís. Fernández moved back to Barcelona later in the year with her older sister. When the club opened Oriol Tort Training Centre, including a girls' student dormitory as part of La Masia, in 2021, one of the nine places was given to Fernández.

She played her first official match for the first team in February 2022, becoming one of the youngest debutants in the senior squad. She made five appearances in the league and Copa de la Reina in the 2021–22 and 2022–23 seasons. She then had a larger role in the 2023–24 season, due to a large number of injuries to the squad's first team defenders, establishing herself as a central defender. She made her UEFA Women's Champions League debut on 13 December 2023 against Rosengård, and scored her first goal for Barcelona in the 92nd minute of this game.

International career
Fernández was first called up to the Spain under-19 squad in October 2021, for European matches, but did not make the final travelling squad. On 9 November 2022 she scored the opening goal in Spain's 3–0 defeat of Czech Republic at Pinatar Arena. In 2022 she won the Under-19 Euro title, and helped Spain defend it when they won again in the 2023 Under-19 Euro. She played the whole 120 minutes of the final that was eventually decided on penalties.

On 30 November 2023, Fernández debuted with the under-23 team, starting and playing the full match in a friendly against Sweden.

Honours

 * Barcelona
 * Primera División: 2020–21, 2021–22, 2022–23, 2023–24
 * Copa de la Reina: 2021–22, 2023–24
 * Supercopa de España: 2023–24
 * UEFA Women's Champions League: 2023–24

Spain under-19 
 * UEFA Women's Under-19 Championship: 2022, 2023