Opinion – Renata Mendonça: Women’s football suffers boycott from those in charge

Women’s football has evolved a lot in Brazil in the last three years, but it could still be on another level if it didn’t suffer such a big boycott from who should care about it the most. The quarterfinals of the Brazilian are proof of that.

The excuse is always the same: “It doesn’t make money, it’s not profitable”. While the world is moving in the opposite direction, filling stadiums and showing that there are large audiences interested in spending money on women’s football, here those in charge prefer to repeat clichés rather than work to contradict them.

The Serie A1 of the Brazilian women’s this year was the most balanced of all time. The least that was expected for the playoffs was that video refereeing would be used to avoid serious mistakes, such as those that occurred throughout the first phase of the competition. The Men’s Series A, B and now even C have VAR (the latter with the use of technology starting in the decisive phase). But the CBF chose to leave VAR in the women’s game only for the semifinals.

Given the low pay offered to referees for women’s Serie A1 games (six times less than what they receive for Serie A games and five times less than what they receive for Serie B), refereeing in the country’s top women’s football competition is often formed by less experienced referees.

Some of those who refereed the quarterfinals, for example, only had experience in base games, Brazilian aspirants or Série D. This ends up contributing to errors appearing (as they did in the quarterfinals), after all decisive games demand more from the referee .

And, if the CBF chooses not to value its product by placing video refereeing, clubs also don’t mind charging it for it. When there are referee errors in men’s football games, it is common to see clubs filing formal complaints with the CBF. 22 complaints have already been made official in men’s football this season. In the case of women, only one complaint was formalized (from Corinthians, in the quarterfinals).

The confederation says that women’s football “is one of its priorities” in the current administration – although it is difficult to believe that, considering, for example, that the women’s team has a FIFA date next week and so far has no confirmed friendlies for play.

“Investment, organization and care with women’s competitions have increased, and this will continue to happen. It is a fact that some scenarios still need to evolve, but it is important to highlight that CBF works daily in this direction”, he said in a note.

Clubs could also do more to fuel the growth of women’s football. It was great to see some of them taking the women to play in their main stadiums in the quarter finals. But Inter’s game, for example, was scheduled for a Monday at 3 pm. What audience can go to a game on a working day at that time?

São Paulo’s situation was even worse. The match was in Barueri (a stadium that is not so easily accessible for fans), and their game time matched that of São Paulo’s own men’s game. Does the fan do how to accompany the two?

Then last week I heard a Flamengo leader saying that it didn’t make sense to send their game to Maracanã (the club chose to play in Luso-Brasileiro) because “it would give a maximum of 200 more people”. But how much effort did the club put in to publicize their game and fill the stadium? This manager seems not to know the potential of his own fans.

Meanwhile, Corinthians sold 15,000 tickets and raised over 300,000 reais with the women’s game. And it will raise much more with the derby in the semifinals. If the clubs themselves and the CBF don’t do the least, it’s no use complaining that “it’s not profitable”. And what are you doing to make it so?