Who is Javi Poves, the former flat-earth footballer who hates capitalism and attacks women’s football: “Let them pay for the party”

01/25/2025

Updated 01/26/2025 at 06:18h.

The social demands in the women’s sport They are more topical than ever. A debate that in recent times has intensified with the lack of professional resources and poor management as a backdrop.

When they ask for equality, they do not talk about salaries, but rather about equalizing working conditions with their male colleagues. They demand, in the same way, to be treated as professionals and not as amateurs. Also, of course, having the same tools that men’s teams have. Pretty clear. And playing with the same conditions will be the only way they will grow.

He women’s football is at a crucial moment of its evolution and in recent years a notable increase has been achieved in salaries, awards, sponsorships, investment from different private and public organizations and attendance at stadiums. The creation of a women’s professional league – just four years ago there was no collective agreement to improve the labor rights of female soccer players– and the increase in media visibility – because what is not seen, does not exist – have contributed significantly to the growth and popularity in the country.

Although there are still many prejudices and inequality In salaries or recognition, women are increasingly closer. However, not everyone shares this vision of progress.

The ex-footballer Javi Poves (38) years old, who now performs a double role as coach and president of the Colonia Moscardó Sports Cluba team from the Usera neighborhood of Madrid, which plays in the 2nd RFEF, once again went viral on the networks, something they have become accustomed to lately with their statements.

Flat Earthism, an approach to Islam and the figure of Bin Laden

During a recent interview on Cadena COPE, he not only reaffirmed himself as flat earther and denied the arrival of man on the Moon, but also attacked certain aspects of women’s football. It is worth remembering that in 2019 he named his previous club, Mostolés Balompie, Flat Earth (flat earth in Spanish), thus becoming the first flat earth team in the world.

Poves defended that female soccer players should be financially self-sufficient: “I am very much in favor of women’s soccer, but let them pay for the party anyway “I pay for my party.” These words, addressed to the presenter Juanma Castaño, reflect the position of the former player, who played in the First Division with Sporting de Gijón 11 minutes, against the financial support for women’s sportswhich he considers excessively dependent on external subsidies.

In this regard, the former footballer who at the age of 24 hung up his boots because, according to him, “football is capitalism and capitalism is death”, insisted that subsidies to women’s football clash with the ideals of feminism. For him, this sport should not depend on external aid: “What women’s football cannot expect is to be supported and maintained with other people’s money.”

Javi Poves trained in the quarries of Atlético de Madrid first and Rayo Vallecano later, to later go through several Madrid football clubs until he He signed Sporting in 2008. Fundamentally to play in his subsidiary team. He debuted with the rojiblanco first team in the First Division, although he did not count in the Asturians’ plans for the following season in the Second. When his contract expired, he announced that he was hanging up his boots.

After his retirement he embarked on a journey of personal discovery around the world that eventually took him to Iran. He settled in Tehran and approached Islam. «I have seen that my way of conceptualizing the world is Islam. People who are able to understand what Islam means will be happier. I ask you to investigate what Islam means, which is neither terrorism, nor bombs, nor Bin Laden,” he said in statements to El Larguero de la Cadena Ser in 2013.

For the Spanish coach It is logical that female soccer players earn much less than mensince they do not generate it. “It’s as if I now become a journalist and set up a media outlet and I show up here and say that I want to win exactly the same as you,” he explained. Thus, Poves insisted that income should be based on experience and ability, something that, in his opinion, should also apply to sport.