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MARCA
MARCA is a Spanish-language sport daily founded in 1938. Headquartered in Madrid, the newspaper focuses primarily on soccer, in particular the day-to-day activities of Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid and Rayo Vallecano. MARCA is owned by the Unidad Editorial publishing group.
Mapi of FC Barcelona and Ludmila of Atletico de Madrid during the spanish championship
CLARIN
Irene Caselli

Ahead Of Women's World Cup, A Global Fight For Equality

From Afghanistan to Argentina, women soccer players are pushing against the grain to earn equal treatment and respect in a growing, global sport.

MONTE CASTELLO DI VIBIO — When I found myself reporting on women's soccer in 2017 as part of a project on gender inequality, the female version of the beautiful game was getting few headlines.

Only a handful of journalists and academics were looking into it and pointing out the unequal conditions women faced: discrimination, sexism, limited resources were the common denominator across different cultures and economies. But two years later, with the Women's World Cup set to kick off in June, things seem to be taking a turn for the better.

Female matches have drawn record attendance. National associations are recognizing women players as professionals. And the media is taking notice, turning wider attention, finally, to the struggles female soccer players face even before they take the field for this year's big event, in France.

Show us the money

One of the biggest stories is unfolding in the United States, where on March 8 — International Women's Day — players from the women's national team filed a lawsuit against the country's Soccer Federation over equal treatment and pay.

The reigning champion U.S. women's team has won the World Cup a record three times — in 1991, 1999 and 2015. The U.S. men's team, in contrast, has never fared better than third place (and that was in the very first World Cup, in 1930). And yet, as the lawsuit points out, women national players are paid just 38% of what their male counterparts earn.

US_Women

US Women's Soccer Team celebrate goal — Photo: Kevin Langley/CSM/ZUMA

This is possible because the men's and women's U.S. national teams have separate collective bargaining agreements, and their pay is structured differently, reports Anne M. Peterson of the AP. The 28 players of the women's national team are seeking damages that include back pay.

As a salary survey released in 2017 by Sporting Intelligence points out, the pay gap is more entrenched in soccer than in politics, business, medicine and science. Indeed, the nearly 37 million euros per year that Brazilian star Neymar earns playing for Paris Saint-Germain, the survey points out, is roughly equivalent to the combined yearly salaries of 1,693 female players from the world's top seven women's leagues (France, Germany, England, USA, Sweden, Australia and Mexico).

Brands and bonuses

While some star female players can make as much as their male counterparts because of endorsement deals and sponsorship, the disparity has a huge toll on less famous players. Historically, the argument has always been that clubs receive lower revenues from women's soccer compared to men's. While that would not apply to national teams, where it's up to the state to decide how to remunerate players, even the lower revenues myth is coming apart.

For one thing, more brands are jumping on board to sponsor women's soccer, as Suzanne Wrack, female soccer reporter for The Guardian, tweets: "Lucozade sponsoring Lionesses, Budweiser partnering with Lionesses, Gatorade sponsors Man City women, Nike becoming official match ball supplier of Uefa's women's competitions and Nike & Adidas release separate women's team kits for the first time... Now tell me there is no money to be made in women's football. Big brands can smell what's in the air."

A case in point: Adidas recently announced that it will pay its sponsored women athletes from the World Cup's winning team the same bonuses it awards male World Cup champions. This is the same company, it's worth pointing out, that got into hot water in both Colombia and Argentina because it used models rather than national team players to present their women's jerseys. Imagine using a model — and not Messi — for the men's jerseys.

Attendance also seems to be hitting new highs. In Spain, the world record for a women's soccer club match was set on March 17 when a crowd of 60,739 turned out to watch Atletico Madrid play Barcelona in the Spanish capital.

The match was played in the Wanda Metropolitano stadium, home to Atletico's men's team, rather than in the normal women's locale, which has a capacity of just 3,500, reports CNN. Afterwards, Spain's leading sports papers, Marca and Diario AS, dedicated their front pages to the story — yet another surprise considering that only 4% of sports media content is dedicated to women's sports, according to UNESCO.

Sexism in South America

Women's soccer is also making strides in South America, where female players have had to fight against some of the worst conditions among soccer-loving countries.

In Brazil, the region's biggest soccer market, the national TV network Globo announced that it will broadcast the Women's FIFA World Cup for the first time, the Brazilian women's sports blog dibradoras reported.

There are signs of progress in neighboring Argentina as well. Brenda Elsey, an associate professor in history at Hofstra University and an expert in women's soccer, has reported on the plight of Argentine players who receive no salary and have to pay for their own travel expenses. But in March, Argentina's soccer association announced that the national women's league will be granted professional status, and that the association will contribute towards the payment of professional contracts of at least eight players per team.

The professionalization of soccer gained momentum this year when player Macarena Sánchez launched a legal complaint after she was dismissed by the UAI Urquiza team, the Argentine daily Clarín reports.

In Colombia, in the meantime, members of the women's national team went public with allegations of mistreatment. They were also threatened, they said, with having the country's professional league downgraded to amateur status. Allegations of sexual harassment within the girls' under-17 team came to light as well.

Colombian male soccer stars, including Bayern Munich midfielder James Rodriguez, came out in support of their female counterparts, and eventually the professional status of the women's league was confirmed.

"We celebrate that decision and we hope that the parties involved comply with their commitment, not only with sport, but with equal opportunities for women in football, and the fight against discrimination," Colombian daily El Espectador noted in an editorial.

Canada

Team Canada celebrates making a goal — Photo: Brad Smith/ISIPhotos/ZUMA

Leveling the playing field

FIFA, the sport's self-proclaimed governing body, is also turning its attention to allegations of discrimination and abuse. Last year, players on the Afghan women's national team accused their federation's male officials, including President Keramuddin Karim, of sexual and physical abuse. The investigation followed revelations that Khalida Popal — a former team captain who has lived in Denmark since 2016 after receiving deaths threats in Afghanistan —made in an exclusive interview with The Guardian.

FIFA is investigating Karim and extended his suspension in March — good news from an organization whose former president, Sepp Blatter, once suggested that women wear tighter uniforms to make their games more commercial. Three years ago FIFA created a Women's Football Division dedicated to growing women's soccer and promoting women's empowerment and leadership. And in October 2018 it launched its Women's Football Strategy, providing a clear plan to grow the women's game globally.

"If women will go to those lengths to play football, we can only imagine how the women's game will develop under the right global conditions," Kelly Lindsey, the current head coach of the Afghanistan national women's soccer team, commented on CNN. "Men's soccer may have a 111-year head start, but with the required shifts in culture and governance, the women's game will explode."

All of this leads, of course, to the sport's next big moment, the FIFA Women's World Cup in France. I, for one, can't wait — and not just because of the electrifying show these world-class atheletes will deliver. This is also a matter of equality. Recent developments are encouraging, but there's much ground to cover still before women players enjoy an even playing field.

Piqué in 2015
MARCA

When Politics Invades The Soccer Pitch, And Vice Versa

-Analysis-

The fraught drama of politics landing in the arena of sports has popped up recently in several different places around the world. It also happens to date back (at least) as far as Ancient Rome, as historian Sarah Bond recently explained in Forbes.

In the U.S., the NFL is currently roiling in controversy over its football players protesting against racism by kneeling during the National Anthem. But the stakes may be even higher as the worlds of sports and politics collide in the (for now, at least) Spanish region of Catalonia. Gerard Piqué, a Catalan-born standout defender for both the FC Barcelona league club and the Spanish national team, has wound up in the middle of the battles raging over Catalonia's bid for independence from Spain. After Piqué expressed his support for independence, he was the target of boos and insults from national team supporters who once worshiped him for helping Spain win back-to-back World and European Cups, in 2010 and 2012. Amid the uproar, Piqué has offered to stop playing for Spain.

Piqué has become a kind of visceral expression of the pro-independence movement, as his treatment fits into the Catalan narrative that it's being oppressed by "Madrid." This feeling is reinforced by the fact that his club, FC Barcelona — whose arch-rival is non other than Real Madrid — has identified itself with Catalonia over the years, giving the team "an explicitly socio-political dimension," as soccer writer Sid Lowe explained in The Guardian.

"Untenable Situation" — Spanish sports daily Marca"s Oct. 3 front page

There is no shortage of examples of athletes becoming the embodiment of political struggles, as La Stampacorrespondent Francesca Paci notes. In 1990, Zvonimir Boban became a hero to fellow Croatians after kicking a policeman during an infamous riot between supporters of his team, Dinamo Zagreb, and of the Serbian club Red Star Belgrade. At the time, both cities were part of one country, the now-defunct Yugoslavia. But coming just days after pro-independence parties had won an election in Croatia, the riot and Boban's kick were subsequently seen as an omen of things to come, as ethnic wars would consume the Balkans for most of the decade to come.

Though Boban was barred from the upcoming World Cup, his club career was destined to flourish. The following year, he left Zagreb for the top Italian league, where he would play a key role in multiple Italian and Champion League titles for AC Milan. As fate would have it, one of Boban's teammates in Milan is aiming to take soccer and politics to a new level right now: George Weah, the only African to have been named FIFA World Player of the Year, is running in Liberia's presidential election today. Already a senator who has run for the top office twice in the past, Weah is considered a favorite to succeed Nobel Peace laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in what could be the first smooth transfer of power in 73 years. With a total of 20 candidates in the race, the election is as uncertain as that of any good soccer match. For politics and sports are each well-served by fierce and open competition, and handshakes once the final whistle blows.

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French Soccer Stars Blame Racism For Euro 2016 Exclusion

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MARCA, June 1, 2016

"Didier Deschamps has bowed to the pressure of a racist part of France," French soccer player Karim Benzema told Spanish sports daily MARCA, less than 10 days before the beginning of the European championship in France.

Benzema's remarks echo comments made a few days ago by French soccer legend Eric Cantona, who suggested the striker, currently playing for Real Madrid, and another player of North-African origins had been left out of the national squad on racial grounds.

Officially, the French soccer federation ruled out Benzema's participation after he was charged with conspiracy to blackmail a French teammate, Mathieu Valbuena in a sex-tape scandal.

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Zidane, Real Madrid's "SoluZZion"

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MARCA, Jan. 5, 2015

"The soluZZion," reads the front page of Madrid-based sports daily MARCATuesday, a day after Real Madrid announced that former French soccer star Zinedine Zidane would replace the unpopular Rafael Benítez as team coach.

Zidane, 43, is new to the coaching game. A 1998 World Cup winner with France and a 2002 Champions League winner with Real Madrid, the former attacking midfielder, nicknamed "Zizou," had most recently been in charge of Madrid's second team.