Women’s soccer | Memories of a pioneer of the Spanish women’s soccer team

Elisabet Sánchez Rubio remembers her time as a footballer on the 40th anniversary of the first match of the Spanish women’s team

He watches Barça every weekend and was one of the 91,553 people who watched Barça-Madrid in the last Champions League at the Camp Nou

Elisabet Sanchez Rubioalready retired, tells her story while sipping a cup of coffee, in a bar on the street Sardinia from Barcelona and before a table cluttered with photos and old newspapers with his name underlined in yellow. Born in the city on December 29, 1959, she is one of the soccer players who, 40 years ago today, they played the first game of the official Spanish women’s team. Daughter of a man from Murcia who worked in the Estrella Damm factory and an Andalusian woman who worked as a doorman, she began to play in the streets of Gràcia and in the Plaza del Rellotge.

“My friends came to ring the doorbell. ‘Eli, come down to play?’ My father didn’t like it. He always scolded me because he didn’t want me to be with a child.s. When I saw him go by in the square I would run home so he wouldn’t see me. Or I would hide and then continue playing,” she recalls. The ball always belonged to a friend: she couldn’t even dream of having one. She was the only girl: “The people who were sitting on the benches called me ‘xicotot’. And I thought that they were right, because it was not normal in those days, but I continued because I loved playing soccer. It has been my life and my passion.”

Her adolescence coincided with the 1st Catalan Women’s Soccer Championship (Pernod Cup): “Just antes ago, Barcelona, ​​Espanyol, Sabadell and Sant Andreu played a quadrangular. My mother always listened to the radio at home and heard that they were asking for players to form the teams for the home run. And she called, because she knew that I had an enormous illusion to play. She always defended me and told my father: ‘Antonio, leave her, she likes him.

His mother, Pepita, made that secret call from his father.

bonus envelope

He appeared at the Espanyol tests, at the age of 16, one day in Sarriá and with “about 200 other girls”. The coach told us to put ourselves where we wanted. And I put myself on the right wing, up there”, he agrees. It was the first time he had set foot on a football field. He was one of those chosen and, while working in a television factory, he was one of the architects of Espanyol’s victory in the Pernod Cup, in which the blue and white team beat Vic by the ‘goal average’: “It was wonderful, a rush of joy”. He remembers feeling “shame and embarrassment” when playing in stadiums full of people, like Sarrià or Camp Nou. They didn’t charge anything to play, although from time to time I received an envelope from a manager as a reward for being the best player.

Still keep one of those letters, signed by the vice president and dated February 23, 1972: “I beg you to accept this small gratuity that you have earned for your great will and enthusiasm for the game through the matches held in the month of January. We request absolute discretion among your teammates. At the same time, we inform you that your parents are invited to attend the game that will be played in the town of Banyoles on Sunday.” “Over the years, when my father came to see me, he would drool“, he smiles. He remembers with pride that Antonio, his father, got a hundred colleagues from the Factory to help financially the women’s team of Espanyol.

“They have told us barbarities, a lot of humiliation, but when I entered the field I isolated myself from everything, because if it did not affect you, they called us a tomboy. And I remember that one day they asked a player if it was easier to score a goal or a tortilla of patatos”

Sánchez played with the Spanish team that between 1971 and 1972 played six friendlies against Portugal and Italy without having the status of official selection by the Spanish federation and without being able to wear a representative shield of the country on his shirt, due to the disapproval of the institutions of the time. Those were days in which the president of the Spanish federation, José Luis Pérez-Payá, assured that “women in shirts and pants are not very favoured”. “It was pure machismo. They have told us atrocities, many humiliations, but when I entered the field I isolated myself from everything, because if it did not affect you. They called us tomboys. And I remember that one day they asked a player if it was easier to score a goal or a potato omelette,” Sánchez says angrily.

“A dream”

The federation did not recognize women’s football until 1980, “forced by Europe”. And the first match of the official women’s team did not come until February 5, 1983, that is, 40 years ago today: a friendly against Portugal (0-1) in the Pontevedra municipality of La Guardia. The coach was Teodoro Nieto: without ever having seen a women’s match, he had been appointed 15 days before, according to ‘El País’, “because in the federation they thought he had little work as a futsal coach.”

Sánchez, one of the only two players who played in the unofficial and official selection, was a starter. And before returning to Madrid on the Rías Bajas express train, he took a match ticket from a table. He still keeps it as a souvenir, signed by her companions. Also He keeps the call-up for that match, with the names and the travel plan, and the shirt he wore. He rests in a closet, along with four more shirts from the Spanish team. “Playing with the national team was a dream. Or more. Because she couldn’t even imagine it when she was little,” she says.

A lot of time has passed and the situation has improved a lot, but he remarks that “there is still a long way to go. Look at what has happened with Barça in the Super Cup, with the medals. It’s a contempt”. He watches Barça every weekend and was one of the 91,553 people who watched Barça-Madrid in the last Champions League match at the Camp Nou: “My hair stood on end with emotion. To say ‘I have been part of this’. I have healthy envy. I feel that we got the bad and now they have the good, a little thanks to us. I have colleagues who always say ‘I wish I had been born now, what a bad luck’, but I don’t see it that way. I think we had to live our time, better or worse, certainly more worse than better, but, with a lot of sacrifice, we were the seed of what has come after”.

He gets up, pays for the coffee, and opens the door. She already opened it in the 70s and 80s, first “clandestine” and then “pioneering”.