Bruna Vilamala fell in love with football watching Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Lionel Messi.

She grew up playing for FC Barcelona, who she joined at the age of 11, as well as her local team.

Such was her passion for the sport, even her mum became hooked.

Now the Spain international says there is a lot of Barcelona about the football she is trying to help Albion play in the WSL and domestic cups.

Albion return to action today with an FA Cup tie at home to Durham (12.30pm).

They have already reached the quarter-finals of the League Cup with Bruna playing a prominent role, notably in the decisive 6-2 triumph over Bristol City.

Her Albion CV also includes a winning goal away to Crystal Palace in the league.

But it still feels like we have more to come from the forward player who is on a season-long loan from Barça.

The 22-year-old from Catalonia told The Argus: “I started playing when I was four.

“I played in a team who at that age wasn’t even seven-a-side.

“To put us on a seven-a-side pitch was too big!

“Then I went to a club in the town 20 minutes from home.

“Then to Barça and from Barça to here. I was at Barça for ten years.”

As with many young English players, Bruna played boys’ football at a young age.

She said: “I only started playing with girls when I was 12.

“I used to have two games a week with my girls team and then I’d go and help a boys team so I didn’t lose the competitive element I had with them.

“I have one older sister who started off in swimming but then moved on to football and it is a sport we love.

“All the family love football. My mum maybe a bit less but, in the end, she had to go to so much football with me and my sister that she ended up liking it as much as all of us.

“All the family are Barça fans. When I signed for Barça it was a dream, especially at this age, and I had a great experience growing up with Barça.

“I learned all the values which they give you there, which go well beyond football.

“When you go in so young, the values become part of you.

“The respect, knowing who you are, everything helps you grow up as a footballer and as a person.

“I think all that is very important. Things like doing the media.

“You need that education to face such things.

“We are footballers, we are not necessarily media people. We have to learn that with time “Before, there wasn’t so much media as there is now.

“There is more and more media attention on us “With the successes Barça Feminino have had, we have appeared more and more in the newspapers. Interest is growing.”

Bruna has bounced back from a serious knee injury, her second, which ruled her out for a year.

As she points out, that was three years ago now – so she has been back for two years.

She said: “All of us who play football or do any sport know there are injuries.

“I haven’t had much luck with them during my short career so far but it is all a form of learning.

“You take positive things from all this and you learn to enjoy what you have at this moment.

“I’m really good now. I do a lot of work to be good on the pitch.

“I have a plan in the gym and everything to be fine on the pitch and I feel like nothing ever happened.”

Bruna has come into an Albion side built around a Barcelona legend in influential midfielder Vicky Losada.

She is getting used to the WSL and its style of football having been warned by Losada what to expect.

Bruna said: “It is a lot more physical than the Spanish league but it is a challenge for me.”

(‘Challenge’ was the one word she said in English throughout the ten-minute interview – as if it has been said to her over here a few times.) “I have taken it in this way, to learn and adapt to this and I feel better all the time in this aspect.

“In Spain, the game is a lot more controlled, a lot more tactical.

“Here it is back and forth, back and forth.

“There is a lot more transition play so a lot more physical in this sense.”

But the Barcelona style is her football DNA – what she loves and was brought up on.

And that is why she says Albion, with head coach Dario Vidosic, is a good fit.

“I’ve always loved Barça since I was young. Men’s team, women’s team, everything.

“To start with it was the Barça of Xavi, Iniesta, Messi.

“I think I fell in love with football because of them and the football they played.

“It was a football I have always liked and what we now try to play at Brighton.

“To have the ball, to have possession and to attack.

“This style represents me a lot and I feel so comfortable here.

“When we started to have contact with Brighton about coming, they told me their intention to bring this style to this league.

“Apart from Manchester City and Chelsea, there wasn’t another team who did it.

“I think it is working well up to now and hopefully it continues like that.

“I want us to be as high up as possible.

“If we can be top four. Same in the cups, go as far as we can.

“We don’t say we can’t do anything, we don’t give anything up as lost.

“Hopefully this season could be the first one with a trophy for Brighton’s women.”

As well as football goals, Bruna is also playing a role with two Catalan basketball giants - Pau and Marc Gasol - off the pitch.

The NBA stars launched the Gasol Foundation, which looks to reduce child obesity in the USA and Spain.

Bruna said: "My target is to give a voice to this foundation so that a lot more boys and girls know about it.

"We help families who have less resources offer a healthy lifestyle to their children in terms of diet.

"Marc and Pau travel a lot in the United States, where childhood obesity is at a high level but there are also a lot of cases in Spain.

"We want to give people little tips to give their kids a more healthy life and try to correct the childhood obesity.

"The culture in Spain is different but there are still problems."