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Women still lose by landslide

2022-06-19T10:46:33.556Z


The Spanish soccer players celebrate the new economic agreement with the federation, but ask UEFA and FIFA to shorten the distance with the men, marked by the difference in income generated


Without much euphoria but happy after sealing an agreement with the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) that represents an important leap for the women's team, one of the leaders of the Red highlighted these days in private and under condition of confidentiality shortly after the announcement: “If we take into account where we come from, the change for us is very big.

But little by little we have to go further.

Now it is UEFA and FIFA who have to take a step forward in terms of equality between men and women”, affirmed this leader of the dressing room.

After six months of negotiations, the Federation and the captains reached an agreement last week: the Spanish women's soccer team will receive the same percentage of prizes and sponsorships as the men's.

Bonuses for friendlies are matched and several of the working conditions are matched with the men's team.

As for the total figures, however, the difference between one and the other is still enormous.

UEFA, for example, distributed 317 million euros among the men's teams in the 2021 European Championship for the 16 that it will give to the women's teams in this summer's Euro.

Men take 23 times more.

FIFA, for its part, has already announced that the prizes will be 440 million in Qatar 2022. In the last Women's World Cup, in 2019, the prizes were 10 times less: 44 million.

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In January 2022, a month after the creation of FutPro, a union exclusively for women's football, negotiations began between the captains of the national team and the federation.

From the outset, something unprecedented: the players asked that FutPro take the lead in the conversations.

“When we were starting to devise the union with the players, we talked that the agreement [for the League, approved in 2020] was fine but that we had to go a step further.

And that for all of them also included the national team”, explains Amanda Gutiérrez, president of FutPro.

The first thing that was done was to look at the starting point.

The players received 150 euros per day for diets;

300 for an official match, plus 150 if they won;

150 and 75 per friendly;

and 1,000 euros for concentration in image rights.

With these data on the table,

Federation and union agreed that they would analyze other countries.

“We wanted to know what happens in the first 10 of the FIFA ranking”, completes Reyes Bellver, a lawyer specializing in sports law, who was also present at the negotiations.

The team that heads the list is the USA, current world champion.

After years of disputes, they reached a historic agreement to correct the inequality: the prizes distributed by FIFA and CONCACAF for men and women are put into a common fund and distributed in identical amounts for both teams.

The Federation, however, viewed the American pact with some suspicion.

“We had to be realistic, we couldn't compare ourselves with the US. The female generates more than the male”, details Gutiérrez.

Then what happens in Europe was analyzed.

The situation was closer to that of the Scandinavian countries.

"Football is Norway's biggest sport for girls and has been for years, but girls don't have the same opportunities as boys," complained the winner of the first women's Ballon d'Or, Ada Hegerberg,

England (eighth) distributes the money in a similar way to that approved in Spain: "The FA pays its players exactly the same for representing England, both in terms of allowances per game and bonuses per game," announced the Federation English in 2020. In Germany (fifth) they are still far from equal, reports Elena G. Sevillano.

The highest body of German soccer (DFB) will pay 60,000 euros to each player if they lift the Euro this summer, more than double what they won in 2013 (22,500), but far from what it offered the men's Euro of the year past (400,000).

"For us it is not about

equal pay

, but about

equal play

, that is, creating equal conditions," said Giulia Gwinn, a German player

Sky.

FIFA Ranking

Spain is the seventh team in the FIFA ranking.

“You had to take into account what was happening in other countries, but the most important thing was to take into account what was happening in women's football in Spain, because the men's team of X country does not generate or have won everything that the Spanish team has won ”, explains Amanda Gutierrez.

That was when the captains and the union leader welcomed the model of the men's team.

That is, a percentage of prizes in official competitions and a fixed amount traced by friendlies.

The Spanish players, like the German ones, also wanted equal working and travel conditions.

And they succeeded: “Now we have a hyperbaric chamber, hypoxia training, in the gym there are a lot of junk with which the physical trainer is delighted.

The Anthill

.

The negotiations, although they never ran the risk of stagnation, were not easy, nor did they have the unanimity of the players.

One of the most controversial points was image rights.

Not because the federation did not accept that the female would take the same percentage as the male from each sponsor, but because the soccer players wanted more commitment from the RFEF.

"It would be nice if they got their act together to get sponsors and that it's not always the same players who go to events," says one of the locker room leaders.

"There were players who were not compensated to play with Spain"

Former Germany coach Silvia Neid recalls that the prize that the Mannschaft players obtained after winning the first European title in 1989 was a stylish coffee set that her mother proudly brought out to visitors for many years.

In Spain, not too long ago, there were footballers who chose not to participate with the national team.

“I have seen colleagues who stopped going to the national team because it did not compensate them financially,” explains Vero Boquete, an international with La Roja between 2004 and 2017. “I have thought for years that we have lost generations of high-level soccer players, who could surely have earned more than you earn now.

What was happening?

They weren't professionals.

They trained at nine at night, they had no gyms or where to prepare.

Many had to work.

"I don't know how much they charged at the time of Vero," says Amanda Gutiérrez, president of FutPro.

“I understand that, even, it would be less than the base with which I have started in the negotiation.

But that could have happened to us too.

Despite the fact that today the players are paid at their clubs and there is an agreement, which is minimum but there is an agreement, there were soccer players who were not compensated for going to the national team on their vacations.

What if they got injured?

They could miss a competition with their clubs for having gone to the national team.

And for what money?” Gutiérrez concludes.

For Amanda Gutiérrez the agreement is positive.

The players, unlike the English and German players, did not want a fixed amount.

“The prizes grow competition after competition, also the money from the sponsors.

We couldn't catch our fingers”, says the president of FutPro.

Now, yes, the peephole is in UEFA.

“We can't ask UEFA to match the men's awards because it wouldn't be sustainable.

But what they have to do is make the fans want to see this European Championship.

Make announcements, promotions, make sure that each country broadcasts it.

That way people will consume it and women's football will grow”, concludes Gutiérrez.

Another step was achieved in the feminine.

But only one.

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Source: elparis

All sports articles on 2022-06-19

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