Another issue is the order. Should I share about what's freshest in my memory or should I write chronologically? I hope you can bear with me as I work towards the best format, which may very well be neither one option or the other but actually a blend of the two. To say my blogging skills are rusty would be a severe understatement... So please bear with me through this ice-breaking post.
In my last post, I shared about my return to playing in February after ACL surgery in late July 2014 (almost exactly one year ago today), but much has happened since then. I earned back the starting position at River Plate, played in my second Clásico against Boca Juniors which ended in a 0-0 draw, and got the call up to train with the Argentine Women's National Team as of March to prepare for the Pan American Games which were held this past month in Toronto.
When I first began brainstorming for this post, I thought it would be interesting to talk about how despite the obstacles and struggles along the way, I was finally able to reach my goal of representing Argentina in an international competition. However, thankfully I saw the light and realized that my struggles and obstacles honestly pale in comparison to those of some of my teammates and of many players from the other teams at the tournament. So, I'm going to spare you my whining/"humble-bragging" and instead hope give you an insider's view of women's soccer in Latin America and the Caribbean.
One of the best aspects of the Games, besides the feeling of walking onto the field in front of a good-size crowd (the only sold-out match was the final between Colombia and Brazil, but Canada always drew impressive audiences too), was having the opportunity to share and compare experiences with players from other countries. Even though I wasn't able to speak to every team (I didn't get the chance to talk with players from Ecuador or Canada- which has a youth/women's soccer system similar to that of the U.S.A.), I was able to talk with players from Trinidad & Tobago (T&T), Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil.
Since the first three teams listed were in our group, I'll let the order of the games determine the order of the posts. I'll start with T&T, our opening match. The final result was an unfair 2-2, due to poor refereeing (we had a goal called back for offside which on the replay was very clearly a legal goal and the second goal scored by T&T was in the last minute of stoppage time on an invented free kick)... Even so, despite the result, it was a good start for a team which had not played any international friendlies in the months leading up to the tournament and had only been working with the current coaching staff since March 2015. The result, however, is less interesting than what the Trinidadians told me.
When I asked one of the coaches about the status of women's soccer in his country while waiting in line for breakfast one morning, he told me that in general it was not good, BUT 2015 was the pilot year for a professional women's league in the country. Later, I had the chance to talk to one of the most experienced players on the Trinidadian team, Ahkeela Molon, who played college soccer in the United States and then went on to play professionally in Iceland and later in Sweden before returning home to join the newly formed league and to train with the national team. While she didn't share much about the levels of player development, more specifically about youth divisions for women, she did talk about her salaries at various clubs and with the national team.
The conversation actually began with a series of questions from her side, "How much do you earn in Argentina? What clubs do you play at? How much does the national team pay you?" When I told her the sad truth regarding the "pay" at River Plate, she couldn't hide the look of shock on her face and the automatic question which followed "What the heck are you doing in Argentina?" I had told her that we aren't actually professional, but at River we receive a "monthly" stipend which averages around 800 pesos (less than 60 U.S. dollars), varying slightly depending on player performance, practice attendance, etc., but for this year we've only been paid through March or April.
She then asked what living costs were like in Argentina, and I explained that they were much less expensive than in the United States, but the stipend from the club doesn't even come close to covering costs; it's more like a small help which comes every once in a while. Logically, she assumed that the club was a small one since she had never heard of it, but when I showed her a picture of the stadium, one of the outside and one of the inside during a Superclásico, the look of shock dissolved only to be replaced by one of disgust. Ahkeela couldn't believe how a club as big as River Plate could not afford to invest more in its women's team.
SIDE NOTE: *I don't even want to imagine her response if I had told her that as of this year the club has retracted any form of medical coverage for the women's team, refusing even to pay for or provide the medical exams necessary for clearance to participate in competition... More to come on this later...*
She said that her club paid roughly the equivalent of 800-900 U.S. dollars per month while also covering housing, food, and travel expenses. However, the key difference between Argentina and Trinidad was the source of the salary as well as the number of teams in the league. While in Argentina the "salary" or "stipends" for players are determined and covered (or not) by the clubs, in T&T the money comes from the national government. In Argentina, however, there are currently 18 teams in the "official" league, in T&T there are only 5-6 teams in the professional league, a significant difference in terms of how many players are on salary and other general costs to be covered.
Her questions then turned towards the national team because surely it had to be better than the situation at the clubs... While it is better, it's not by much. During the months leading up to the tournament, we received a daily stipend of 140 pesos (approximately 10 U.S. dollars) to be paid at the end of each week and while traveling we received a daily stipend of 230 pesos for a total of just under 5000 pesos (approximately 350 U.S. dollars) over 3 weeks. Some players who had been on the squad since the ODESUR competition last year had been receiving a monthly scholarship of around 4500 pesos from ENARD (National Entity of High Performance Sports), the organization connected with Argentine Olympic sports and performance, a scholarship which will be up for reconsideration in August since women's soccer does not have another olympic-related international tournament until 2018.
Again our explanation was met by surprise as Ahkeela exclaimed that no one on the Trinidadian team would have even traveled for such poor pay. When they had faced similar situations, they went on strike and refused to board the airplane until an agreement was met and their federation responded to the players' demands. Now, it was our turn to be shocked. The idea of refusing to board for insufficient pay seemed completely foreign and impossible to apply in Argentina. At River, the players considered refusing to play until the medical situation was improved, but we never carried it out for fear that the club would just get rid of the team entirely to cut costs, and similar fears with the Argentine Football Association prevent us from carrying out such a method of protest.
Even though my knowledge of women's soccer in T&T is limited, it seems as though strides of progress have been made since last year's CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying in October when the Trinidadian's volunteer coach, a legend in U.S. women's soccer, Randy Waldrum, was forced to ask for donations via Twitter to cover the team's food and housing costs since the federation had sent the team with only 500 U.S. dollars and no training equipment for the duration of the team's stay in the United States. The appeal for help initially led to an angry response from the T&T government and soccer federation, but it might have been the necessary wake-up call to invest and provide more support for the growth of the sport with the foundation of the professional league.
I'm all for learning and adopting ideas from other countries which have been proved to work, but it's still early in my "investigation" into women's soccer to draw any sort of conclusions. Let's wait until we hear about a few more countries before deciding which ideas could be applied to el fútbol femenino in Argentina.
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| In the locker room before our opener against Trinidad and Tobago |
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