Opinion – Renata Mendonça: Santos built a tradition in women’s football, but today shows neglect

I’m not going to spend lines here talking about the tradition of one of the biggest football clubs in the world. The victorious story that brought Santos here takes a toll when the club presents results that do not correspond with it. A club that had Pelé, Coutinho and so many others in men’s football, which had Marta and Cristiane again in women’s football, did not achieve greatness by chance.

And if in men’s football we saw Santos agonize due to irresponsible management — he fought not to be relegated in the Paulista Championship in the last two years —, in women’s football the warning signal has already been turned on (and continues to be ignored).

The so-called Sereias da Vila built their tradition over a decade ago. With Marta, Cristiane and company, they enchanted the continent and conquered America for the first time in 2009. In fact, it was because of them that the women’s Libertadores was created that year. Champion of the Copa do Brasil in 2008, it was demanded that the women’s team respected the same logic as the men’s (of the champion of the Copa do Brasil playing for Libertadores), and then Conmebol organized a competition based in Brazil, with games in Santos, Guarujá and Sao Paulo.

There are two titles in America, two titles in the Copa do Brasil, four in the Paulista Championship and one in the Brazilian Championship, the latter won in 2017 against Corinthians. Since then, Santos’ performance in the national competition has been declining. There were four editions without being able to pass the quarterfinals and in the current edition the inexplicable happened: the Sereias da Vila, so traditional, did not manage to qualify for the playoffs of the Brazilian Championship.

A team that has Cristiane, the top scorer of the championship who made his season with the most goals in Brazilian football since he arrived in 2019. Which has Brena, a very quality midfielder, Thaisinha, a skilled number 10, Ketlen, the club’s historic top scorer. It was an unbalanced squad, it’s true, but looking at the eight teams that qualified, it’s impossible to understand how Santos was left out.

Perhaps the club’s stance off the pitch helps to explain why on the pitch things haven’t worked out for some time. If in men’s football, Santos faced many management problems in recent years, in women’s football the situation is even more serious, because there is no interest in identifying the problem.

I looked for the club and the president, Andrés Rueda, for a position on this early elimination in the Brazilian Women’s Championship and the answer was: “we will not comment on this disqualification”.

This positioning is left for the players. The experienced defender Tayla spoke after the match on the SporTV broadcast and apologized to the fans, midfielder Laura Valverde, trained at the club, too, and Cristiane made a post: “Forgive me, you didn’t deserve the shameful campaign we did in this competition!”, wrote shirt 11.

And what will the leaders of Santos say? What makes a club with such a tradition not play even a semifinal in the women’s Brazilian since 2017? What mistakes happened (planning, management on and off the field) so that the team could not be among the 8 best, while more modest teams, with less investment, like Real Brasília and Grêmio itself, were there? What charges are being made to the technical committee?

​For now, the silence of those who run the club is deafening. And this neglect of one of the most traditional teams in women’s football is even worse than the early elimination in the Brazilian.