The promoters of women's Barcelona: "Before I spent time in meetings of cigars and ties"

María Teixidor (left) and María Teresa Andreu, on Thursday in Barcelona.©Consuelo Bautista (EL PAÍS)

Already with the Ballon d'Or at home, Alexia Putellas did not forget to go to the Catalan football gala last December.

“You can see that his status has changed and that he has many commitments, but with us he continues with the same attitude.

Whenever we have called her, she has complied, ”explain sources from the Catalan federation.

Putellas arrived at the gala on time.

“But he arrived”, conclude the same sources.

Her mother, Eli Segura, was with her.

Alexia doesn't stop.

Interviews, business events...”, she told a friend present at the event.

In Barcelona, ​​they endorse the theory of the mother of the captain of the European champion team.

“She does a lot of things, it's true.

But she assumes her responsibility as the leader, ”they say in the Barça entity, at the same time that they seek not to burden her agenda too much.

“You have to try to protect her”,

Everything has changed in the life of Putellas.

Too much, if you rewind to January 2019, when Barcelona fired their coach, Fran Sánchez.

Alexia, at that time, was not always a starter in a team that sought to regain the throne in Spain.

"The players weren't happy at a time when we had given them everything to make them happy," explains Maria Teixidor, a former Barcelona director, responsible for professionalizing the women's blaugrana section in 2016.

"I took a lot of time to talk to all the players and all the staff to find out where the problem was," recalls Teixidor.

And one of his main conclusions was that the role of Putellas had to be enhanced.

The Catalan had to look in the mirror of Lionel Messi.

“I didn't exactly tell him that I wanted him to become Leo, but I did tell him that he should be the cornerstone of the project.

I told him because I realized that he has the makings of a leader.

She had a very clear idea of ​​the football that this club should play and, above all, because she was willing to sacrifice herself for her teammates”.

The bet on Putellas worked for Barcelona.

A few months after the dismissal of Fran Sánchez, the Barça team played their first Champions League final.

Two years later, in 2021, Barça conquered Europe.

This Saturday, the azulgrana will defend the title against Olympique de Lyon in Turin.

“Alexia makes me very proud”, intervenes in the conversation, Maria Teresa Andreu, former soccer player of the Peña Femenina Barcelonista —the team received material and economic support from Barcelona, ​​but did not depend organically on the club— between 1971 and 1983. She was the creator of the women's section of Barcelona in 2002. Now, the two pioneers of the Catalan club chat at the Teixidor office in Barcelona.

“In Alexia we have a star, yes.

But we have a reference.

Now you can see children on the street with her shirt ”,

Andrew completes.

She does not keep any elastic from her time as a player.

And she had to improvise.

A few years ago she bought one.

She put her name on it and number 1. And that's how she goes dressed to all the Barça games, now from the box.

Ramallet's idea

"I always played as a goalkeeper," says Andreu.

She did it as a child to earn a place among her friends on the street, also when she arrived at Barcelona.

On that occasion she, she thanks to Antoni Ramallets, a historic Barça goalkeeper from the early seventies and a collaborator of the then precarious Barça women's team.

“Who is the tallest?

You, Maria Teresa, to the goal”, Ramallets released.

The funny anecdote between Ramallets and Andreu invites Teixidor to reflect.

“Beyond the fact that the soccer players have grown up without references, they have not had any type of methodology or anything.

They have been improvising until they find themselves.

It happened to them in the field, to realize who was a better defense than a lane, but also in everything in general.

No one had spent enough time with them.

Neither coaches nor managers ”,

Andreu happily recalls her career in football, first as a player —"she was the captain and I took everyone's shirts home to wash them," says the exporter—, then as a manager.

Yes, combative.

“I have never smoked in my life and I have endured smoke at the tip of a shovel.

I hung out at cigar and tie parties.

They talked about youth, children, futsal and when it was the women's turn they said they missed the plane.

But I have hit the table more than once: 'I am here and you have to listen to me'.

In Teixidor's time, luckily for him, smoking was already prohibited at the Camp Nou.

"For women's football to have advanced, as in any women's cause, committed men have been needed," says the former director of Barça between 2015 and 2020.

Andreu created the women's Barça section, Teixidor professionalized it.

Both agree: "The next step is equality."

Should Alexia earn the same as Messi?

“Or that they charge less.

It is about the fair distribution of resources”, concludes Maria Teixidor.

How to create a different business model than men's soccer

Maria Teixidor would like the M to appear in the initials of the men's Champions as the W does in the women's.

“Maybe that's the point.

If I should have the acronym for women, why shouldn't I have the one for men?

The best step would be not to distinguish.

Talk about football, period”, reflects the Barcelona board between 2015 and 2020. But the 45-year-old lawyer also invites us to analyze the business model of men's and women's football.

“I'm not saying it.

The international organizations that are dedicated to this say so.

The masculine model is exhausted ”, she exposes.

After last March, the Higher Sports Council approved the statutes to professionalize the women's league in Spain, Teixidor presented a candidacy to preside over the new competition.

She joined Reyes Bellver, a lawyer specialized in sports and president of the Leadership Woman Football platform, and has the support of two investment groups, Muse Capital and Gloria Football, who will contribute 50 million euros.

“You have to look at the women's football clubs as a reality independent of the men's.

They are a different reality and need a different look.

Some things are very good and very valid things have been built;

there are others, however, that must be reviewed.

If not, the feminine has the opportunity to rethink the model and extrapolate it”, explains Teixidor.

And analyze the pending accounts in the League.

"Not only do we have to match the teams, but we also have to create a competitive League, with financial support that allows the clubs to grow and be sustainable," concludes Maria Teixidor.

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