On Sunday, October 3, 2021, the first Classic ever in our women’s football was played in the Netherlands. Internationally, tourists had already let themselves be shot into space, 5G had already been rolled out nationally and in the history of women’s football Ajax and Feyenoord met for the first time. Let’s be ashamed of this for a moment.
The time to the historic pot was also to die for with Atlético Madrid-Barça in the men. If you believed the Spanish press, Ronald Koeman flew out, if you believed club president Joan Laporta, he stayed. To let him fly, Laporta has to pay Koeman somewhere between six and thirteen million. He doesn’t.
The Spanish women are one year ahead of the Dutch. Their first Classic was on October 4, 2020 played. Barca won 4-0 in Madrid.
In the United States, the country of the most fertile ground for women’s football, no games were played this weekend. The abuse scandals were not limited to gymnastics. Also in NWSL football, a male trainer could repeatedly abuse his players and rely on a system that tends to protect the male perpetrators better than the female victims. The president of the union has resigned and things are flat.
In the Netherlands, the first Classic, with a red card, three yellows, an undisclosed penalty, five goals and incessant rain, was complete. At the end Ajax lost, and yet I was grumpy.
The fact that the first Classic was only played now was not the only ridiculous fact: the Ajax supporters were not allowed to go to the match in Rotterdam. If the supporters of the men are not allowed to go to the away Classics, then that is not allowed for the women, was the reasoning of the clubs. What counts for the men also counts for the women. Except when it comes to salaries. In that case, the equivalence will only take effect in 2023.
I hoped that the Ajax supporters, burning with anger about this selective equating, would go to Varkenoord with a whole periodic delegation to throw freshly drawn tampons onto the field. That didn’t happen. Cheerful Feyenoord supporters sat in the crowded stands. A big guy waved two flags. Two ladies sipped early beers. When the born Rotterdam-born Pia Rijsdijk scored the fourth goal, her joy lit up half of the Netherlands and yet that hypocritical fake equivalence continued to dangle like a cloud above the Classic.
To cheer myself up, I thought back to Luis Suarez who made a telephone gesture after his goal against Barça, possibly in the direction of the stands where Koeman was sitting. The same Koeman who fired him with one phone call. After the match said a grinning Suárez that he had done that to let people know that his number had remained the same.
The light on the horizon is that with the millions Koeman can make for his seasonal work in Barcelona, he can probably double the salaries of both the Ajax and Feyenoord women, organize a few overdue Classics and have enough left over to buy a house. buy on the Dutch housing market. Let’s just hope he sees that.
Carolina Trujillo is a writer.