Losing a sight? Nothing can stop Deportivo's Antía Veiga

Antía Veiga followed her father’s footsteps and did not hesitate to play as a goalkeeper since she was very young. Now, at the age of 17, she is one of the players with the greatest projection in the youth academy of Deportivo Abanca, a team from Galicia that plays in Liga F. In adittion, last year she signed her renewal with the team until 2028, ensuring her continuity while waiting for the top opportunity to make her official debut with the first team.

Antía has gone though all the youth categories of Deportivo women's team after arriving as a cadet and she participated in the preseason with the first team in the 24/25 season, where she made his unofficial debut in the friendly against Real Oviedo. In addition, Antía is a regular in the U17 and U19 national teams.

But behind the young Galician player there is a unique story of overcoming. As her father said in an interview in La Voz de Galicia, a Galician newspaper, Antía lost her sight for a while after she was 12 years old, while playing in the garden with some friends on her holidays, when a toy goal fell on her and hit her in the head. This caused her to fall down and a few days later she began to see evil in one eye. Her parents took her to the hospital and after several tests. She ended up losing the full sight of one eye.

Not the end of her story

Now a days, as her father pointed out in that interview, the don’t know what exactly happened. They told him that it could have been a shock to the optic nerve. Antía spent a month in hospital and was discharged from the hospital with no vision in her eye. After three months in which Antía had to learn to live and carry out the day to day without seeing out of one eye, she recovered her vision. Today she is still undergoing routine check-ups and still does not know the exact reason for that injury.

After so much time out of the field, Antía returned to training and suffered a ruptured fibre and, days later, tore the ligaments in her ankle. Undoubtedly, the hardest stage in the career of the Galician goalkeeper.

Antía is one of the many girls who have had to sacrifice their time to dedicate themselves to football and be ton having a career in the future. All her life she has been used to traveling by bus from her town to Abegondo, where the Deportivo Abanca sports city is located and where both, the men’s and women’s teams train. The bus caught the player at noon and did not return home until the evening. Despite of that, she manages to carry out his studies, thanks also to his sacrifice and determination to carve out a future both in sports and in his studies.

Today Antía continues her career at Deportivo Abanca B and with the latest renewal that links her to the club until 2028, in addition to ensuring her continuity in the team, she hopes to make the leap to the first team and able to make her official debut in Liga F.