Opinion – Renata Mendonça: The current revolution in women’s football is led by women

The final of the women’s Supercopa do Brasil represented another step in the revolution that we are seeing happening in recent years in women’s football. Live game on open and closed TV, almost 20,000 paying viewers at Neo Química Arena, a narrator commanding the transmission of the country’s largest broadcaster and, on the field, inside and outside the four lines, women who are finally starting to conquer a leading role in the game. which, historically, has always been commanded by men.

I arrived early in Itaquera and saw the referee Edina Alves Batista next to her teammates taking an official photo. A year ago, Edina was making history as the first woman to referee a FIFA Club World Cup game. Here, she represents a lot, occupying a space of authority in the field that has always been denied to us – although Brazil had the pioneer Silvia Regina as the first woman refereeing Serie A games, in 2003, after that it was necessary to wait more than 15 years for someone to repeat the feat (with Edina, in 2019).

Then I greeted Aline Pellegrino, the current coordinator of women’s teams and competitions at the CBF, along with Ana Lorena Marche, who has just assumed the role of supervisor of women’s teams. I also talked to Thais Picarte, another former player who specialized to work in management, and was also there as the new coordinator of women’s football at the FPF. The newest executives in football.

These were brief encounters that, the next day, made me think. I think it’s always important for us to keep in mind where we came from and where we’re going – that’s what helps us identify if we’re on the right path. In 2015, when I started covering and closely following women’s football, one thing caught my attention. It was led, commanded, managed by men. The protagonists of the field, of course, were women, players. But on the outside, whether in technical command or in charge of management, they were always men.

The CBF did not have any women in positions related to women’s football – only the press officer of the women’s team who was, at the time, the “stranger in the nest”. The FPF had no one to take care of the sport. In refereeing, it was also rare to see women as head referees – it was more common to see female assistants. And in most clubs (as is still the case today), it was also men who took care of their football.

The first major exception may have been Corinthians, which at the time it partnered with Audax to resume investment in women’s football in 2016, had a woman in charge of the project, Cris Gambaré, who is still responsible for the department. in the club. This differential helps to explain Corinthians’ success in the sport.

No, you don’t “need to be a woman” to run a women’s football project at the club or in a confederation. It needs to be someone who first wants to do something for women. And second, be competent to do so. That was not the case for many of the men we saw at the helm of women’s football until recently. This is not even the case with many of those we see today commanding departments of large shirt clubs, such as Palmeiras, São Paulo, Grêmio – teams that are responsible for women’s football, managers or former players who have no knowledge or experience in the sport.

It is no “coincidence” that the new times we are following in women’s football, with more broadcasts, more competitions and more investment, have come precisely when competent women have finally conquered the spotlight in the game that has always been theirs. And there is much more to come.