Lawsuits in offices continue to slow down the evolution of the Women’s Soccer League. It happened two years ago, until all the parties signed the historic collective agreement after endless and very bitter negotiations, and it is happening now with the promise of professionalizing the tournament, a label that in Spain only has three competitions: First, Second and ACB . The months pass, the gesture is not materialized and the players are already threatening another strike.
“If it is not unlocked, there will have to be a strike. We are tired of waiting ”, Silvia Meseguer, Atlético player and vice president of AFE (Association of Spanish Footballers) warned this Tuesday. Accompanied by 11 other first classmates, they avoided revealing the deadlines they handle and the duration of that hypothetical strike, but they assured that the times are clear. “We have taken steps backwards in women’s football,” summed up the red-and-white Amanda Sampedro at his side.
The pattern is quite similar to what took place in 2019 on the road to the collective bargaining agreement. By the encystment of the situation; the wars between the protagonists, inherited largely from the men’s confrontation between Javier Tebas ‘LaLiga and Luis Rubiales’ Federation; the division between the clubs -Real Madrid, Barcelona and Athletic separated from the rest-; and by the response of the players. Then, a strike that completely paralyzed a day helped unblock the conflict and now they are threatening another similar action. The objectives of this world are high, first with the historic collective agreement and now with professionalization, but at the moment they are only possible in fits and starts and with a lot of noise.
“We have taken steps backwards in women’s football,” says Amanda Sampedro.
With a Barcelona champion of the Champions League and nine months into a European Championship in which the national team thinks about high levels, the truth is that the day-to-day of the League is a path of thorns. The conflict between the different actors is permanent and, as a consequence, television visibility has been reduced, which further affects a tournament where the generation of income in the teams is scarce and the accounts of the clubs show negative figures in the immense most of the cases.
The problem in 2021 is the professionalization process of the League, which is not yet closed. The Government has taken its word for it and no one doubts that, sooner or later, it will be carried out. The question is when and how many shreds a universe leaves behind that is not knowing how to take advantage of all the tailwind it receives at the political and institutional level (the agreement was signed in Congress). Last June, the Higher Sports Council (CSD) approved the professionalization of the First Division and called on the clubs to deliver statutes to formalize the step. However, the entities do not agree.
On the one hand he received the proposal of 12 teams (all members of the women’s football association, the first sister of the men’s association, led by Tebas) and, on the other, that of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Athletic. A division that reflects the two political sides of Spanish football, with Florentino Pérez and Joan Laporta as strong opponents of Tebas.
According to the Executive, there would still be four months for the 16 entities to reach a meeting point, but the players are not willing to do so much. Meanwhile, the CSD insists that it does not intend to impose anything and that its role is only a mediator.
The clubs do not agree on the elaboration of the statutes of that professional League
According to sources close to the clubs, one of the friction aspects is the so-called individual commercial rights. That is, what do the teams give for the joint promotion of the competition. Madrid, Barcelona and Athletic, led by the white institution, aspire to have full control over this aspect, unlike what happens in the men’s league. The majority system in decision-making is another section to be ironed out. According to several people familiar with the negotiation, the positions have come closer in recent times, although the players demand an immediate solution. And after that future agreement between the 16 clubs, the intention of the CSD would be to somehow incorporate the Federation, which has a long history of litigation with the female employer, near Thebes. Each step is a stone in one sense or another.
Meanwhile, on a day-to-day basis, the difficulty of all entities to generate resources is enormous. A problem that was already suffered when closing the collective agreement, because the vast majority needed an extra injection of 100,000 euros from Mediapro to assume the salary costs of the labor text, which set the minimum salary at 16,000 (12,000 part-time ). “Our advantage is that we have a papa club,” admits the leader of an entity, who requests anonymity, in reference to the coverage offered by his men’s team. “We only enter through the sponsors of the shirt, and that gives little. Just like the ticket shop ”, he adds.
The vast majority live in the shelter of men’s outfits. The problem is some independent clubs, such as Granadilla, from Tenerife. “We must pull all the ingenuity,” says Sergio Batista, its president, who has a budget of about two million, covered in a significant percentage by public subsidies. “We try to keep the templates not too long so that they cost less. In each game there are three or four players from the subsidiary team, ”says the manager.
“We try that the templates are not too long so that they cost less,” admits the president of Granadilla, an independent entity.
The situation, he assures, has worsened because this course no longer has television income, like the other 11 clubs that make up one of the blocks, when Mediapro terminates the contract. Each team received about 200,000 euros per course. The operator understood that what was signed was not being complied with when other institutional channels appeared (for example, Real Madrid Televisión) that “offered free for what they had to pay”.
Television, now and before, was always a battlefield: some with Mediapro and others with the Federation. Recently, it offered to broadcast one match per day on Teledeporte, and only five joined (Real Madrid, Barcelona, Athletic, Madrid CFF and Alavés), which charge between 300,000 and 500,000 euros, depending on the case. The rest rejected the proposal because, they say, they did not receive a guarantee of how much they would enter. The consequence is the obvious loss of visibility to the general public.
The economic solution, according to the 12 clubs gathered around the employer’s association, is the professionalization of the League, since it would imply an increase in income. First of all, by the centralized sale of television rights. The CSD has also pledged 31 million in three campaigns to improve facilities and help provide structures to entities.
In short, a landscape full of conflicts that a few days ago was crowned with two very representative episodes of the crisis: Real Sociedad, Levante and Villarreal were sanctioned by the Competition Committee with the loss of three points for repeatedly covering the patch of the Federation of their jerseys (they had been warned seven times), and Rayo-Athletic was played without the local team presenting themselves with a doctor, which led Camila Sáez from Vallecana to have to be treated by visiting doctors.
“If a cardiac arrest occurs in training, there is not even an ambulance”
The general panorama is not beneficial for anyone, but the situation worsens significantly in the dressing room of Rayo, penultimate classified in First. Two weeks ago, the players denounced in a statement the shortcomings they suffered: the absence of a doctor and physios in the matches; also of a delegate, and of gymnasium; that the club had stopped paying for the houses it offered them; and they charge a week after the end of the month. A complaint that was left in the eyes of all last Sunday, when Athletic doctors had to be the ones who attended the local player Camila Sáez because the Vallecano team did not have a doctor. The captain of Rayo, Pilar García, gave voice to all this yesterday. “Nobody [del club] He has contacted AFE or Camila Sáez. What we have experienced this weekend cannot happen. Nobody attends to us, we do not even have a minimum. If the professional league is made, we will have all that ”, commented the soccer player.
“If a cardiac arrest occurs in training, we don’t even have an ambulance. That is why we are here. The clubs that have the least must present some requirements if they want to be in this professional league. They must take us seriously. It is a matter of health, and not just ours. Not having pitches with natural grass harms everyone ”, concluded García, who was surrounded by two players from Alavés (María Ortiz and Alba Aznar), two from Villarreal (Lara Mata and Zaira Flores), two from Eibar (Arena Altonaga and Ana Lucía de Teresa), his partner from Rayo Paula Andújar, and one from Sevilla (Lucía Ramírez), Granadilla (María Estella) and Betis (Lucía León), as well as Meseguer and Sampedro.
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