He sees women’s football as “resilient, unstoppable and unstoppable” and with a lot of room to grow
MADRID, 30 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of Liga F, Beatriz Álvarez, assured this Thursday at the ‘Business Sport Forum’ of Expansión and MARCA that they should avoid comparisons with the men’s LaLiga, which helped them take off in their first year of existence, but she believes that they should to enforce the values of women’s football which, among others, are being “resilient, unstoppable and unbreakable.”
“In League F we have quite assumed trying to avoid comparisons with the men’s league. It would be a serious mistake to fall into this comparison, therefore we try to escape from it. League F was born a little over a year ago, almost a year ago and a half. And, indeed, we are in a moment of takeoff, I would say of exponential growth,” he said.
Álvarez pointed out that Liga F and LaLiga go “hand in hand in many things” but he sees a positive difference in many issues. “We must try to enhance things and some of them are values such as resilience or precisely that DNA, that journey that we have had to be resilient, to be unstoppable, to be unstoppable. The hope that we transmit, our values,” he said.
“There are many people who say that women’s football is unbreakable, because despite the obstacles, the barriers along the path we have taken, having come this far and being the only professional women’s sport in Spain places you as the spearhead. But it is also a responsibility, but it is true that in the end it is also a privilege to be able to be here and indeed, now we really have to try to echo and champion a little all the leadership of women’s sports here in Spain,” he added.
Since the creation of the F League, they have worked hard in a “complex and complicated” year. One of the things that facilitated our access to all the partners and sponsorships was precisely LaLiga. In June 2022, the Professional Women’s Soccer League was established and the competition started in September, so we had three months to do absolutely everything. One of the facilities we had was that we shared 11, now there are 12, of our 16 clubs with LaLiga,” he acknowledged.
“This made it easier for us to reach a commercial agreement with LaLiga so that they could act as commercial agents and be able to reach potential sponsors and thus make it easier for us to start a competition. Being able to have guaranteed profits gives a minimum of stability to the clubs, some commercial income that allows us to grow and well, now logically we have to take off much more. I believe that we are satisfied with the agreement, we are satisfied but we know that after this tortuous year that we have gone through we now have to work,” he was sincere.
And, above all, he wants to leave behind what happened after winning the World Cup and the controversies with the former president of the RFEF Luis Rubiales. “Let’s hope that from now on, both the growth that League F is having and being world champions, which in the end gives you visibility, will allow us to reach potential sponsors that will make us grow faster. That effect of being world champions “All the controversies that have occurred until now have not been noticed. For some things it has been good for us and for others not so good,” he noted.
Looking at the future of League F, he noted that they are working on two fundamental projects. “One is the development of the strategic plan for the next three years and another is brand development,” he noted. “Within this brand development, of course one of the issues and words that define us are unstoppable, it seems that the future is already today, tomorrow’s game is already today and I believe that we have before us the opportunity to make grow this product in a brutal way and we have added values and that I believe is something that we are also working on to differentiate ourselves with respect to men’s football,” he delved into this idea.
“We have to do everything now, a brand development process, we have to implement our brand here in Spain. We have three years ahead of us to work in that sense and try to achieve our three fundamental objectives when we set the Strategic Plan. In that search for In the end, the mission is evident that we have to try to make an attractive competition that is economically sustainable. Women’s football is still not sustainable, the clubs continue to be in deficit and we have to continue working on that,” he said.
And the F League wants to be “more than just an organizer of a competition.” “We want to be a symbol of change, we want to impact society, we have to champion the empowerment of women, the naturalization of girls and boys seeing a soccer player, a woman too, and well, we have to delve into those three fundamental pillars and that all our initiatives and projects fall on those three axes,” he said.
Asked about Barça’s dominance, she assured that they are looking for balance but that the Blaugrana club is “opening doors” for them. “It is still the best club in the world in women’s football and it is opening doors and I also think it is important to make the League F brand visible through FC Barcelona in the rest of the world, and to have the best players, both Ball de Oro with Alexia and now Aitana Bonmatí, in the end it is opening doors and allowing us to have a visibility that in another context we would not have,” he acknowledged.