Sky blue – and white – thinking
Photography: John Walton/PA Archive/PA Images
Almost 50 years ago, when Argentina took part in the very first unofficial Women’s World Cup in Mexico, they looked like a nation keen on emulating the achievements of their men’s side when striker Elva Selva fired in four goals to down England 4-1 in a group stage match.
But a 5-0 defeat to Denmark and a 4-0 defeat to Italy showed there was plenty of work to be done and after decades of mismanagement, lack of investment and a general disinterest in their national team and the women’s game, Argentina is only now starting to pick up the pieces after a breakthrough both on and off the pitch in 2019.
Twenty years later, in 1991, the same year as the first official Women’s World Cup – which Argentina didn’t attend – the first league began under the name Campeonato de Futbol Femenino.
Argentina failed to qualify for the subsequent tournaments in 1995 and 1999 but did make it to 2003, their shortcomings exacerbated by conceding 15 goals in their three group matches.
There was a mini breakthrough in 2006 when they recorded one of just two wins to date over Brazil to qualify for the 2007 tournament and the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, but the problems remained.
Goalkeeper Gaby Garton has seen up close the ups and downs the team has experienced since first joining the side almost a decade ago in 2011.
“I first went to a camp in 2011,” Garton, who was born in the USA, recalls. “The kit was pretty well used, they were the wrong sizes, and the boots had holes in them that had been sowed back together.
“The pitches were good but the only locker room we had was the futsal one, so we had 25 players changing in a room for 15. They were things I wasn’t expecting.”
Teammates told Garton how bad the situation was domestically too, but the keeper couldn’t believe clubs such as Boca Juniors and River Plate would allow such standards and she joined the latter in 2013 to see just how bad things could be.
“Low and behold, they were not exaggerating. If anything, they were sugarcoating it a bit! We had little to no priority at the club. We used the field whenever even the youngest boys weren’t on it. None of the clothes were ours, it was all loaned, whatever was available and had been used for three or four seasons.
“The games were poorly organised. We’d go weeks without playing because a referee wouldn’t turn up or an ambulance was missing. Even if it was just one game they’d suspend the whole weekend, it took six months just to play 13 games.”
Garton admits the culture in Argentina was a “major obstacle” with women’s football, not at all something the general population saw in a positive light. She describes the attitude of people fearing women were going to become like men but says now people are becoming more open to the idea.
But in 2015 it looked like things were heading the wrong way permanently. Argentina blew a 2-0 lead to Ecuador and failed to qualify for the World Cup in Canada.
After that, no games were played for over two years, the manager at the time, Julio Olarticoechea, was moved over to the men’s side to coach the 2016 Olympic side and the team even lost its FIFA ranking.
FIFA themselves intervened and appointed a normalisation committee for the AFA in 2016, essentially taking charge of the association’s day-to-day affairs.
“After FIFA intervened the AFA couldn’t get any other manager for the Olympic side, so they used the manager from the women’s team,” says Argentine journalist Romina Sacher.
“They didn’t play another game until a friendly in Uruguay in August 2017, so it was two years with no game at all. Little by little, games came, and the Copa America started in 2018. That was a breaking point between the AFA and the women, after that the AFA started to pay attention.”
Garton herself describes the situation as “extremely detrimental” as many players headed abroad for football, but things started to change when Carlos Borrello returned as head coach in 2017 after leaving the post five years previous.
Leading up to the Copa America in 2018, which would decide qualification for the 2019 World Cup, the domestic players trained for six weeks together but Borrello only had his full squad together for 15 days.
But it improved from months earlier when players went on strike over the conditions they were forced to play in. Their expenses, which amounted to less than $10, had stopped, accommodation was not arranged, and they would travel overnight and sleep on the coach and train on poor artificial pitches.
“Because women’s football hasn’t been an activity for a couple of years we’d been completely left out of the budget,” says Garton.
In their opening Copa America match against Colombia, the whole squad posed with one hand behind their ear, a message to the media and the AFA they wanted to be heard.
“After that, it had some pretty great repercussions in Argentina. It spread all over the place. Some people realised for the first time we even had a women’s team and after that match one of the major sports networks decided to show our last two games, that was a big turning point.”
The team did enough to not only bring themselves to the attention of the general public but also get the results to qualify for the summer’s World Cup in France, where they placed in a tough group alongside Scotland, Japan, and England.
They drew 0-0 against former champions Japan in their opening game, before a narrow defeat against England and another draw against Scotland ensured a successful tournament for a team who hadn’t existed a few years earlier, despite elimination from the group.
“I don’t think we grasped the extent of what we’d accomplished at home,” says Garton. “People who had never seen women’s football became fans of the national team. A lot of people felt represented by us. We were competing against these powers of women’s football with a fraction of the preparation, infrastructure, and support.
“The one that stands out for me is an image of a group of men in a butcher’s shop talking about our game against England. A group of older men discussing women’s football in Argentina was unheard of, it’s most difficult to change the minds of people who have grown up in a world where women’s football didn’t even exist. Soccer schools for girls started opening up in Argentina and boys’ clubs started to open their doors for girls to play too.”
The team went to the Pan-America games just a month later, but several prominent players, including Garton and influential attacker Estefania Banini, were dropped from the squad for reasons that never became 100% clear, amid rumours players had been dropped for speaking out against the AFA.
“There’s still a bit of uncertainty. It was pretty unfortunate what happened after the World Cup. I’m not 100% sure what the cause of me being left out of the squad was, the Pan-American games you can only take two goalkeepers and I had an injury pre-World Cup, so maybe it was that.”
The team reached the final without conceding a goal, losing the final to Colombia on penalties. Encouragingly, the friendlies kept coming until the calendar was put on hold due to the COVID-19 crisis, but Garton is hopeful things have changed for the better.
“From now on, it’s seeing if the AFA will take advantage of the FIFA dates to have friendlies. It’s a bit of a process and I’m hoping the player’s association can accompany us in this and the next time we need to have discussions they’ll be at the table with us and not on our own.”
Garton is at least at the forefront of encouraging that change. She’s joined the FIFPro Global Player Council and when we speak, she’s preparing to head to Brussels for a forum meeting alongside the likes of Jodie Taylor, Anita Asante and names from the men’s game such as Vincent Kompany.
While improvement is clear, things are not perfect. A new domestic cup competition has been launched but schedule changes have prevented players from going to work, as most of the league is still semi-professional, but clubs must have a set amount of full-time professionals.
One team played a match under protest due to the fact the game was played during work hours when several of their players were at their day jobs.
“There are 17 clubs in the new tournament,” says journalist Sacher. “Half of them have money issues and some of them have structural issues. I think because AFA rushed things, all this is happening because of that. It’s like a shortcut to do the right thing but at the wrong time.
“With the national team, things are so much better now. But now you have to keep going and they’re trying but there are still issues to resolve to make things right. I think they’ve done more in the last year than in 20 years of women’s soccer in Argentina.”
One thing’s for sure, the next 20 years look brighter than the last.
Words: Rich Laverty
First published 2 September 2020