August 5, 2023

The footballers of Argentine from Rosariowho resigned to continue in the AFA Primera B Tournament Due to the lack of payment of travel expenses and the mistreatment to which the leaders subjected them, they revealed that in the last meeting a leader told them “if you want to continue playing, take off your team clothes, put on some leggings and go find a sponsor.”

“What the leaders did is not understood because they are going to lose the points of two games ( once morest Argentino de Quilmes and Atlanta, in which the team did not show up due to non-payment of travel expenses and any training expenses and the dismissal of the technical director) when they were four points behind the lead”, a close friend of the soccer players reported to Télam.

The “salaítas” players published a statement on social networks in which they state: “We, the Argentino de Rosario squad of players, want to communicate the reasons why we decided not to continue representing said club in the First B competition of AFA”.

And they recalled: “We have worked for two and a half years as true professionals, regardless of not receiving a salary, and we have left the club at the top fighting for two championship finals and promotions; generating recognition for the institution in women’s soccer in the city and the country. However, today we are not valued as footballers and athletes, and we experience many situations that lead us to make that decision. At the beginning of the year we had some meetings with the club in which we were promised equality with the men’s squad, but as time passed it became clear that this was not going to be true.

“In recent months, we, the players, have been in charge of organizing raffles, selling pizzas, looking for sponsors and requesting subsidies from the Municipality with the aim of maintaining the basic conditions to continue being the competitive team that we have always been,” they reported.

In addition, they pointed out: “We made our clothing sets to be able to correctly represent the institution; several times we had to pay for our food when we had to travel to other provinces; medical studies that were at our expense, per diems for pending players. As if all this were not enough, we ourselves rented a property to train since we can’t use the court too much to “not ruin it, since the men’s game is televised”, as they told us”.

In this sense, a source close to the players confided today that “when the girls went to play in San Luis they traveled by bus, but the technicians went by car because they did not enter, and with a barbaric cold the food was a plate of cold rice , so they had to pay for their food out of pocket.”

The players recalled in the text: “We were giving up many things due to the desire to continue playing and be closer to our goal of promotion. Objective that the club is clearly not interested in achieving. The situation of taking away (the coaching staff) the minimum per diem, making it impossible for him to continue leading the team is one more demonstration of how economics are prioritized over football. It is the trigger for all this that we mentioned before, as well as a situation experienced by two colleagues who were asked to work to be able to get sponsors since otherwise the feminine might not be maintained. Both had to go out dressed in club clothes, two hours, three times a week, to distribute one of the brochures that they gave us to different companies. We feel that this situation exceeds the level of disrespect and disrespect that we have already been experiencing.

Regarding the situation experienced by the club’s men’s team, which plays in the First D, the soccer players warned that “the club’s men’s squad does not experience any of this.”

“We are convinced that something like this would never be asked of them. This display of abuse of power only occurs with us”, they remarked and pointed out that they commented “all this to the club’s sports secretary and later to the club’s president, but we were not listened to. They even sought to manipulate us with the threat of not delivering our passes so that we cannot continue our careers in other clubs.

A relative of a player told Télam that a manager told several girls: “If you want to continue playing, take off your equipment, put on some leggings and go find a sponsor.”