Argentine women’s football turns professional, but only just

Buenos Aires (AFP) – The women’s game is turning professional in football-mad Argentina, but there’s very little in that status to compare to the world in which the country’s male superstar Lionel Messi operates and excels.

The Argentine Football Association (AFA) announced in March that the 16-team women’s top division would become professional from June — a welcome boon ahead of the World Cup that will kick off that same month in France.

Argentina have qualified for only the third time in their history.

But scratching below the surface, women’s professionalism is a far cry from that enjoyed by Messi, the highest paid player in the world on $84 million a year added to $27 million in endorsements, according to the 2018 Forbes list of top-earning athletes.

AFA has created a fund worth $2,600 a month for each team to pay the salaries of eight players — those players, not enough to make up a full team, will earn 15,000 pesos each, or $330.

“People see that the national team isn’t doing so well but no-one sees that we can’t live on this,” said Camila Gomez Ares, 24, who plays for Boca Juniors.

Those eight salaries amount to the typical single wage of a men’s fourth-division player.

“Clubs invest in the men but it’s only the biggest clubs that do so with us, and even then it’s a little,” added Gomez Ares, whose team bans the women’s players from using the men’s pitch to keep it pristine for the likes of former Manchester United, Manchester City and Juventus forward Carlos Tevez.

– Selling raffle tickets –

One women’s team, San Lorenzo, has decided to pay all 16 of its female players, but is the exception.

Even at Boca and River Plate — the two biggest and best supported men’s teams in the country — women are only paid expenses.

Top-flight women players have to pay for their own transport, boots, clothing and even medical insurance.

“Some pay membership fees (to their club) and if there’s a shortage to pay the doctor, police or ambulance (who attend games), they have to sell raffle tickets or pay money to play,” Florencia Quinones, a 32-year-old Boca midfielder who once played for Barcelona, told AFP.

“It’s about economics,” says Victoria Bedini, a 28-year-old cleaner who trains in the evenings with the modest Excursionistas club from the Belgrano neighbourhood in Buenos Aires.

There, “boots, clothing, everything is paid for by the players.”

from World Soccer Talk http://bit.ly/2DA3Uu1