Opinion – Renata Mendonça: CBF’s tribute to football pioneers is late, but deserved

Meg, Marisa, Fanta, Elane, Solange, Márcia Tafarel, Sissi, Cenira, Roseli, Pretinha, Michael Jackson… It’s quite possible that you’ve never heard of eight or nine names on this list. Maybe you only remember one or two. But without these names and many others not mentioned here, the history of women’s football in Brazil would not have started.

It was in 1988 that some of them were among the first “summoned” officially for a Brazilian women’s team that was hastily assembled to compete in the experimental World Cup organized in China. In 1991, they would have the chance, for the first time, to play a World Cup – a Cup of their own, exactly 30 years ago.

Taking advantage of the milestone of this date, the CBF is finally going to do something that it should have done a long time ago. The so-called “football pioneers” will be honored at Granja Comary with a commemorative game, a medal and the main thing: recognition.

Most of these women have never even set foot on the lawn of the traditional training center in Teresópolis, Rio de Janeiro. The place opened in 1987, but women weren’t welcome at the time. At that time, the CBF only gave the players what was left of the men.

And right in their first competition, the World “test” in 1988, Brazil took an honorable third place, beating the Chinese, housewives, on penalties. There were 12 teams in the dispute, the games took place in packed stadiums and all of this convinced FIFA that it was a good deal to bet on a World Cup for women.

30 years ago, on November 16, 1991, the first official women’s football event organized by FIFA took place. With 12 teams reunited in China, their first Cup, of course, had its contradictions. One of them was the playing time determined by the organization. They wouldn’t be 90-minute matches, but 80-minute matches (with two 40-minute periods), because they didn’t think women were capable of playing at the same time as men.

That year’s United States captain, April Heinrichs, summed up: “They were afraid our ovaries would fall out if we played 90 minutes.”

While other countries around the world were already investing in their football, Brazil had just got rid of the ban by law (a decree that prevented women from playing football from 1941 to 1979) and, in practice, was still facing an informal ban.

The strong prejudice against women who played ball at that time meant that not even the CBF bothered to give the minimum training structure so that the players arrived in China properly prepared to face the best teams in the world. They ended up being eliminated in the first phase.

Even so, that team was the first to show the world that, in the country of football, women also had the ability to dribble and charm. And it was against everything and everyone, wearing a uniform borrowed from the men, training on improvised lawns and without any encouragement from the organization that printed on the shirts that these women threw open the doors of football for the generations that came after them.

If today the women’s team players receive the same daily rates as men, enjoy the same structure and finally begin to have the ideal conditions to compete with the main teams in the world, this is due to the effort and daring of these little-remembered pioneers .

Know to recognize. Even today, few people know the history of women’s football in Brazil. The CBF tribute is late, but better late than later. May these names never be forgotten.