Soccer and the Women’s History Month
A year of pandemic past, it’s women’s history month, and here’s the information that we’ve collected:
U-18 Women’s Championship organized by CBF
Brazil had the chance to watch their U18 Girls Championship last weekend. The finals between Fluminense’s Team (RJ) vs the Internacional (RS) ended up with the ‘cariocas’ taking the cup.
Besides the championship itself, we must highlight the narration by Renata Silveira, along with the commentators Caio Ribeiro and Renata Mendonça on SPORTV’s channel. There were other cool stories that they and other Brazilian media pros shared recently, like this interview with the young player Luiza Travassos, Fluminense’s number 8 midfielder:
It is very good that Brazilian soccer is finally providing, in a continuous, consistent, and progressive way, this opening for possible paths, creating opportunities for girls and women in sports. May we continue advancing against inequalities also within the sports sector and through the good things that soccer can provide.
All games were broadcast live on the MyCujoo app, with the final phase shown for the first time on a private channel — Sportv. According to CBF, there were 24 teams, 3 phases, and 72 of the total 90 games took place in the city of Sorocaba, in São Paulo’s inner state . The second stage, with the 8 best teams, was held in Criciúma, in Santa Catarina state. This edition had fixed places in the two initial stages in order to provide the sanitary bubble system, avoiding possible Covid-19’s contamination. Aline Pellegrino (CBF’s coordinator), aka former ‘captain’ from Brazil’s National Team, stated, with optimism:
“I am very happy that we delivered this game on an important Brazilian TV channel, in a prime time slot, with the girls showing a lot of maturity in penalty kicks. There were six games in this final stretch — four in the semifinals and two in the finals — all very well played and with many goals. This shows that we are on the right track and women’s competitions can only get better.”
CONMEBOL Libertadores
Regarding the Libertadores, Ferroviária’s team beat Colombian team América de Cali, winning its second title in the competition. The first was set in 2015. In 2019 the team got the second place (losing to Corinthians’ team). Corinthians, meanwhile, beat Universidad de Chile to take third place.
The number of titles won by Brazilian women in the competition brings out some mixed feelings, because we want a strong and competitive South American women’s football. This is important also considering the regional conditions for a good performance in the future world club championship. In addition, the absence of VAR in the competition leaves questions about how seriously CONMEBOL is being about the Women’s Libertadores Championship.
And, unfortunately, judging by the mood on the internet, including during the event, South America still has a long way to solve its issues with machismo and get to the point where women’s soccer is widely appreciated (and women and girls can be respected). Hopefully the next Development League youth competitions for girls, scheduled for April, will present a better environment.
A lot of work to be done
There is a lot of work to be done. Although the Brazilian soccer club Santos took a stand regarding the violent statements against girls and women by former board and member Sergio Ramos, we continue to pay attention to complaints about Juventus’ soccer team neglecting its players, which led to the dismantling of their Women’s Football team. And we already know that the pandemic has affected the female players more intensely, as they are not considered workers in many countries, as mentioned by the FIFPro’s organization survey.
To point out a few good examples, in South America, there are Brazilians such as the former women’s national team coach Emily Lima and Camila Aveiro acting professionally to restructure the women’s soccer in Ecuador. Also, the Observatory of Racial Discrimination in Football joined the ‘Primeira Pele’ (The first skin) project, and published a Anti-Racism in Sports Manual (in Portuguese), followed by a very cool manifesto-campaign of athletes united against racism — there is the video and other content on their instagram. The campaign mentions the underreporting of complaints due to lack of trust in the institutions that are responsible for taking the appropriate action and seeks to encourage anti-racist positioning.
Similarly, Germany’s captain Alexandra Popp has asked the West German Football Association (WDFV) tribunal for an explanation after Borussia Monchengladbach’s U-23 coach Heiko Vogel, 45, was forced to run six training sessions with an adult or grassroots women’s team before June 30. He was also fined in €1,500.
The order was issued by the court after Vogel was found guilty of making inappropriate comments to the officials Vanessa Arlt and Nadine Westerhoff, on January 30. Vogel told assistant referee Vanessa Arlt that “women have absolutely no place in soccer” and that “women should be banned from soccer,” sources told ESPN.
“Discrimination has no place in sports” Popp said. “Maybe you should think about whether these people should still have a place in soccer instead of sending them to a women’s team. It’s simply the wrong approach. It devalues women’s soccer, it ridicules women’s soccer.” Popp said they talked with the German Federation’s (DFB) president Fritz Keller on Monday after what they considered a lack of support. Popp added:
“This should no longer happen. We talk about discrimination, racism, everything all the time, and this kind of discrimination should no longer be an issue. Whether I am on a football pitch or a man does the housework. It doesn’t matter. It’s 2021. Let people live the lives they want to live.”
English Championship — WSL
Sky Sports will show up to 44 matches per season and the BBC 22, under a three-year deal worth €8.1 million (about $9.66 million) per season. “It’s a deal that changes and transforms the English Women’s Super League (WSL),” said Kelly Simmons, director of professional women’s soccer at the English FA, which has negotiated the rights to the competition separately from men’s soccer for the first time.
“It’s not just one club, one person, one entity, this is all about the whole and a it’s a real celebration for women’s football and everyone involved in it”, said Emma Hayes, the Chelsea club’s administrator on Monday. An important part of the deal with Sky and the BBC was the fact that they are all committing to the studio as part of the package as well (the construction of the games, the analysis of the games). This becomes an important marker.
Pre-Olympics friendlies
The US team has announced that it will head to Europe to face the Swedish team on April 10 and the French team on April 13. In this situation, Carli Lloyd will become one of only three players in the history of international soccer — male or female — to have played 300 times for their country, joining former teammates Kristine Lilly (354) and Christie Pearce Rampone (311).
Tokyo Olympics
The Olympics are to take place on July 23rd, and it has been decided that there will be no public from outside the Japanese territory, to ensure safer conditions for everyone. Ticket fees to the public outside the territory will be refunded. “We share the disappointment of all the enthusiastic Olympic fans around the world and, of course, the families and friends of the athletes, who were planning to come to the Games,” said IOC President Thomas Bach.
“But we have also said that the first principle is safety. Every decision has to respect the principle of safety first. I know that our Japanese partners and friends did not reach this conclusion lightly. Together with them, the IOC’s top priority was, is and remains to organise safe Olympic and Paralympic Games for everyone: all the participants and, of course, our gracious hosts, the Japanese people. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder at the side of our Japanese partners and friends, without any kind of reservation, to make the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 a great success.”
Global and local challenges
But the consequences of sexism, racism and homophobia are not the only problems in the sector that affect women, are they?
Perhaps if we did an internal and an external survey about soccer’s public image and, more specifically, of the Brazilian soccer, we would find a strong stigma related to corruption. At the same time, we still hear a lot about the indebtedness of the Brazilian clubs, a supposed lack of resources, and another supposed lack of investment when we talk about women’s soccer.
If there are no efforts towards transparency and accountability, there will hardly be trust from investors, on the one hand. On the other hand, all the optimistic actions might not be perceived as unattached to the mentioned stigma around football but taken as a kind of “distraction” by the community. Human rights and positive environmental actions announced without anti-corruption measures and a broad campaign for accountability constantly sound like bargaining to the ears of those with no short memory.
And it’s not as if FIFA is unaware of the persistence of this stigma on a larger scale. It is well known that it became an international symbol of corruption in 2015. Since then, the organization has been building a path of trying to regain the trust of fans. In 2016, the organization “Transparency International” published a report on Governance in Sport and with some chapters focusing on soccer issues, others on South America’s and others on Brazil’s, including.
In 2017, just four years ago, “Transparency International” and “Forza Football,” a soccer fan opinion platform with over 3 million subscribers, surveyed 25,000 fans from over 50 countries to find out what they thought. 53% of fans did not trust FIFA. Compared to the previous year, in 2016, this number was even higher: 69% of the fans consulted did not trust FIFA.
Having said all this, I leave the question: what are the main challenges that soccer needs to overcome in your opinion?
Credits: Natalia Lopes
