Ana Tejada Jiménez (born 2 June 2002) is a Spanish professional

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby lea ...

who plays as a

centre back In the sport of association football, a defender is an Glossary of association football terms#O, outfield player whose primary role is to stop attacks during the game and prevent the opposition from scoring. Defenders fall into four main categ ...

defensive midfielder In the sport of association football, a midfielder takes an outfield position primarily in the middle of the pitch. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. ...

for the

Utah Royals The Utah Royals (formerly Utah Royals FC) are an American professional soccer team based in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area that competes in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). Established on November 16, 2017, as an expansion team, ...

of the

National Women's Soccer League The National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) is a women's professional Association football, soccer league and the highest level of the United States soccer league system#Women's leagues, United States soccer league system (alongside the USL Supe ...

(NWSL) and the Spain national team.

Club career

Longroño

Raised in the village of Lumbreras in

La Rioja La Rioja () is an autonomous communities in Spain, autonomous community and provinces of Spain, province in Spain, in the north of the Iberian Peninsula. Its capital is Logroño. Other List of municipalities in La Rioja, cities and towns in the ...

, Tejada started her career at

Logroño Logroño ( , , ) is the capital of the autonomous community of La Rioja (Spain), La Rioja, Spain. Located in the north of the Iberian Peninsula, primarily in the right (South) bank of the Ebro River, Logroño has historically been a place of pa ...

, where she was already playing for the first team when they achieved promotion to the Primera División in 2018, making her the youngest active player in the top league, aged barely 16.

Real Sociedad

A solid campaign with Logroño led to her being signed by Real Sociedad in 2019. With her first campaign in

San Sebastián San Sebastián, officially known by the bilingual name Donostia / San Sebastián (, ), is a city and municipality located in the Basque Autonomous Community, Spain. It lies on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, from the France–Spain border ...

interrupted by injury and then the

COVID-19 pandemic in Spain The COVID-19 pandemic in Spain has resulted in confirmed cases of COVID-19 and deaths. The virus was first confirmed to have spread to Spain on 31 January 2020, when a German tourist tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in La Gomera, Canary Island ...

, she became a regular for the ''txuri-urdin'' in the 2020–21 season, starting 24 matches.

Utah Royals

On 22 April 2024, the

announced that they had signed Tejada to a three-year contract. She made her NWSL debut on 25 May, starting in a 1–0 loss to the

Kansas City Current The Kansas City Current are an American professional Association football, soccer team based in Kansas City, Missouri, that competes in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). It was founded as an NWSL expansion, expansion team in 2021 NWSL ...

. Tejada scored her first goal with the Royals on 31 August as the team beat the

Houston Dash The Houston Dash are an American professional soccer team based in Houston, Texas, that competes in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). The Dash began play in the 2014 season. The team plays its home games at Shell Energy Stadium. His ...

, 3–1. Three games later, she was awarded the

NWSL Goal of the Week The National Women's Soccer League Goal of the Week is a weekly soccer award given to individual players in the National Women's Soccer League. The honor is awarded by popular social media vote to the player deemed to have scored the best goal over ...

award following a long-distance strike against

Racing Louisville FC Racing Louisville Football Club is an American professional Association football, soccer team based in Louisville, Kentucky, that competes in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). It began playing in 2021 at Lynn Family Stadium. The team i ...

. She made 15 total appearances with Utah in 2024 as the team finished 11th in the league standings.

International career

Tejada was a member of the Spain under-17 squad that qualified for the

UEFA Women's Under-17 Championship The UEFA European Women's Under-17 Championship or simply UEFA Women's Under-17 Championship, is an annual European championship football tournament, organized by UEFA, for national teams of women under age seventeen. The tournament was first play ...

in May 2018 (Lithuania) and the

FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup The FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup is an annual (biennial until 2024) international women's association football tournament for female players under the age of 17. It is organized by ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' (FIFA) ...

played six months later (Uruguay), winning both competitions. She was still young enough to play in the 2019 Under-17 Euros (Bulgaria) and was named in the 'Team of the Tournament', as she had been in the previous year. She later won the

2022 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup The 2022 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup () was the 10th edition of the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup, the biennial international women's youth football championship contested by the under-20 national teams of the member associations of FIFA, since its ...

. Tejada made her senior debut on 11 November 2022, as a 76th-minute substitute in a 7–0 friendly home win over

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

Honours

Spain U17 *

2018 Events January * January 1 – Bulgaria takes over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, after the Estonian presidency. * January 4 – SPLM-IO rebels loyal to Chan Garang Lual start a raid against Juba, capital of ...

Spain U20 *

FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup The FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup is an international association football tournament, organized by FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), for national teams of women under the age of 20. The tournament is held biennially. ...

2022 The year began with another wave in the COVID-19 pandemic, with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, Omicron spreading rapidly and becoming the dominant variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide. Tracking a decrease in cases and deaths, 2022 saw ...

Individual *

Team of the Tournament:

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

References

External links

Profile
at Real Sociedad {{DEFAULTSORT:Tejada, Ana 2002 births Living people Women's association football defenders Spanish women's footballers Footballers from Logroño Dux Logroño players Real Sociedad Femenino players 21st-century Spanish sportswomen Liga F players Spain women's youth international footballers Spain women's international footballers Utah Royals players National Women's Soccer League players Spanish expatriate women's footballers Spanish expatriate sportspeople in the United States Expatriate women's soccer players in the United States