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Women’s football is booming. Some countries have already taken the step to professionalize it, there are more and more players, more fans of women’s football and brands are beginning to be interested. Even wages are starting to go up. In this edition of Escala in Paris we talk about the emergence of women’s football, its achievements and challenges with Victoire Cogevina, creator of the Gloria application and UN Women ambassador for gender equality in the world.
Last Monday, apart from Lionel Messi, the Spanish Alexia Putellas, a FC Barcelona player, shone at the Chatêlet Theater during the delivery of the Golden Ball, who won the award in the third women’s edition of the France Football magazine award.
Putellas took advantage of the moment to demand the professionalization of women’s football. Our guest from Escala in Paris, Victoire Cogevina, attended the ceremony, witnessing the giant steps that women’s football is taking.
“It comes to disrupt an industry that has operated in the same way for 100 years, which is why it is so exciting for anyone who loves this sport,” explains Victoire Cogevina. “I think that today the brands, the clubs, the players and even the professionals in technology are accommodating ourselves to this Trojan horse,” adds this soccer lover.
Victoire Cogevina knows this industry very well. He fell in love with this sport in Argentina, where he spent part of his childhood. A supporter of Racing Club de Avellaneda, Cogevina founded with her mother in Miami (Florida), where she currently resides, the first soccer player agency run exclusively by women. He also launched Gloria, an application to connect soccer lovers from around the world.
The country where women’s football is more important than men’s is the United States and other countries can learn a lot from it. “The ‘athleticism’ is what the Americans have done best. The players are being trained very early, at the age of five or six. In the rest of the world this is not happening. Thanks to the ‘athleticism’ we can see players They play the 90 minutes with a lot of quality. When we see the US national team play against any other team, they almost always have an advantage, “explains the entrepreneur.
But in Europe there are things that are being done better such as the work of the clubs with the brands. “The United States has a lot to learn from the franchises or brands established in Europe. Here we are seeing clubs like Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich or PSG, which are clubs with many years in football, develop their brands for women who are obviously recognized by the whole world “, he emphasizes.
Salaries for professional league footballers are on the rise
The comparison of salaries between men and women footballers is scandalous. According to Forbes magazine, the highest paid players in 2021 are the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo with 125 million dollars (salary plus bonuses) and the Argentine Lionel Messi with 110 million dollars.
In the case of girls, the club that pays the best is the French Olympique de Lyon. For example, at that institution, Amandine Henry earns almost $ 400,000 annually. “If we consider that two years ago the highest salaries were $ 100,000, and that was already crazy, I think we are obviously seeing a clear growth on that side and I am very convinced that in the next 10 or 15 years we will see gigantic growth and equality in the matter of salaries because footballers are going to become athletes followed by many other women as well and a new audience will be introduced, until recently reserved for men, but there is still much to do “, defends Cogevina.
In practically all Latin American countries the king of sports is soccer and the women’s game is making great strides, especially after the last World Cup. “In Argentina women were not professionals and today they are and this is making women’s football grow by leaps and bounds and that they play at an early age. Soccer technique is in the DNA of Latin American women ”, she affirms.
Soccer as a path to empowerment
As UN Women Ambassador for Gender Equality in Soccer, Victoire Cogevina is making a documentary with the story of various female players in different countries around the world. They have started in Brazil and the story of a soccer player who wanted to play from a very young age, “the father did not want to, but the mother decides to collect the money and score it. And now she is a professional.”
“Soccer can generate gender equality. I think that when you see stories of women who have achieved things in soccer, it is evidence of gender equality because this sport was always for men,” explains Cogevina.
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