liana salazar She goes and comes back, but it is always time to celebrate with Santa Fe. The photos of the three titles of the lionesses have her as the protagonist, especially this year, when the team discovered its third star in a very tough final against the rival that had obtained the most points in the semester, América de Cali.
(You may be interested: This is how the lionesses of Santa Fe celebrated the star in Bogotá: total euphoria)
She has the spirit of the lioness and is a foolproof fighter. But this year she added a factor that he did not have before: in his two previous steps at the club, between 2017 and 2018 and from 2020 to 2021, he had scored 12 goals in 66 games. This year she had 10, plus five assists, to lead the team in both aspects; the first, shared with María Camila Reyes.
Salazar was even able to fight for the Liga goalscoring title, which was finally held by Catalina Usme, from América, with 11 goals. But Liana always put the needs of the team ahead of individual achievements.
Santa Fe returns to Bogotá with the star of the Women’s League.
“I haven’t thought about being a goalscorer, these are things that have happened thanks to the work of the team. I do not think about that. The truth is, what I want and long for in my heart is to be a champion”, said Liana before the final. And she was more than fulfilled.
Together with Nancy Viviana Acosta and the captain Gabriela Huertas, who were also in the other Santa Fe titles, Liana has the mark of having achieved three stars in her career. And Kelly Ibargüen also joined that list, who did it with three different shirts: America’s, in 2019; that of Deportivo Cali, in 2021, and now that of the lionesses.
Liana did not have in her plans to be a footballer in principle. One day she was at the National Pedagogical Institute and they invited her to play a ‘recocha’,
Hector Fabio Zamora / EL TIEMPO
out of the country
Soccer led her to play on three continents and also allowed her to pursue a professional career: she received a scholarship to the University of Kansas in 2011, after being part of the Colombian National Team that played for the first time in a World Cup for seniors. , that same year, and four years later he returned with a degree in International Business.
Professional women’s soccer was not yet in the plans of the managers, despite the clamor of the players after passing the group stage in the 2015 World Cup in Canada, where Liana was also present. For this reason, we continue playing and he went to Europe, to play with Sudet, from Finland, in 2016.
The League began in 2017 and the desire of the Santa Fe managers then was that, just like the men’s game, the team had to be the first champion.
And in the middle of a tower of Babel, with Americans, Trinidadians, Costa Ricans and Venezuelans, Liana won her first star that year.
He was also in 2020, upon his return from the Beijing Sport University, in China, which was in the third division. He said goodbye with promotion to second. He reinforced Huila in 2018 for the Copa Libertadores and won it. And then, After winning the Women’s League again in 2020, he went to Corinthians, with very good success.
Today, at 30 years old, Liana is the experience share of a very rejuvenated squad, with nine players aged 20 or less. “Here the young women have impregnated us with that joy of wanting a first title. The ‘little ones’, as I tell them, come with that hunger and that illusion, that sticks with you a lot and it’s as if you were living a first final ”, she explained. And he wants to take that spirit to the Copa Libertadores, a pending dream, but dressed in red.
JOSE ORLANDO ASCENCI
SPORTS deputy editor
@Josasc