Women's football comes to this Wednesday with a great doubt: Will there finally be a consensus between the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) and all the First Iberdrola clubs? The situation demands it, with great discomfort on the part of the players and the teams themselves regarding the protocol and the calendar in this category. With COVID-19 raging hard in society, seeking solutions is now more urgent than ever in the highest female division.
Thus, after a great complaint from the soccer players in various ways (meetings of the captains with the RFEF, protests in the field and AFE), the clubs and the federative entity will sit down again today, days after their first meeting in order to seek, this time, a consensus. It should be remembered that the RFEF already warned that If there was no agreement, the Spanish soccer entity would make a final decision without further ado.
In this new summit, which is reached after crossing statements from all the parties involved, the objective is decide unanimously which points of the protocol and timetable should be improved. With the difficulty of finding a common ground, all those who participate agree on a more than absolute priority: the health of the soccer players and their coaching staff. This will be the great point to keep in whatever measure is taken.
In the previous meeting, all the requests that the players had made were discussed and the clubs asked for several days to come up with a final decision based on these proposals. Hours after that meeting, the Association of Women's Soccer Clubs (ACFF) released a statement with several points decided by their clubs, among which is not Real Madrid, Barça, Atlético, Athletic or Madrid CFF. Some of the measures exposed by the ACFF are:
- Realization of serological studies among female players to determine the degree of immunity.
- Mandatory nature of FFP2 masks, the prohibition of use of changing rooms during training sessions, as well as establishing strict compliance limits when using it before, during and after matches.
- Limit the number of deferrals that can be requested by each club for causes related to COVID-19 to a single match between now and the end of the season if it could not have a minimum of 14 players between the first team and the dependent teams, of which at least 7 they must be from the first team.
- Prioritize the recovery of matches that were pending on the earliest possible date.
- Prohibit the postponement of matches in the last three league days.
For its part, the Association of Spanish Soccer Players (AFE) requested a few days ago an urgent meeting with the RFEF to discuss the requests they had collected from a meeting with the players. Among the proposals is the obligatory nature of a single room in hotels for each player, the priority of traveling by plane or AVE (in case it has to be by bus, do it leaving two seats between each person) and the prohibition of use of changing rooms in training sessions and matches.