December 25, 1970. For the first time, the Camp Nou hosted a match between Unión Deportiva Centelles and the City of Barcelona National Team, seed of the current women’s Barça. A charity match that opened the doors to everything that came later in Barça women’s football. Including this Barça – Real Madrid that today (6:45 p.m., DAZN) It will be held at the Barça temple on the occasion of the second leg of the quarterfinals of the women’s Champions League.
I get goosebumps all the time“, assures in an interview to AS Carme Nieto (Barcelona, 74 years old), one of those pioneers who conquered the Barça temple for the first time. The former player is very “proud” of the growth of women’s football in Spain. The reality is now very different from what she experienced, who comes from a soccer family and has been a member of Barça since she was 18, and sixteen other young women that Christmas, but nothing would have been possible without her sacrifice.
“They told us things that have no name. But we just wanted to play. What they told us went in one ear and out the other because we were fulfilling a dream. Thank God, this is changing and little by little these things are disappearing. I didn’t have any problems, but I had colleagues who changed their names the first few days so that they wouldn’t recognize her at work or at home,” recalls Nieto, who then combined soccer with her job as management secretary at Laboratorios Ausonia.
“We never thought about all this. It all started with a ‘girls wanted to play football’ ad in a newspaper. The only objective was to play that match, but we wanted to continue“, assures Carme, who will live today’s match in the box together with the rest of the pioneers, with whom she will celebrate a new milestone in women’s football. “If everything is full, it will be an unforgettable experience. I will surely cry. It’s very exciting. I cried in the game against Espanyol and it was quite cold because there was no audience. Imagine yourself in this. But the important thing is that they win and that we enjoy”.
“We have evolved a lot. It has not stopped since we played that December 25, in which we played in front of 60,000 spectators. That was incredible. It was the year 1970. Yes, it is true that the first men’s team played afterwards, but there were 60,000 people watching the first women’s football match at the Camp Nou. A match in which there was more will than success“, says Carme, who points out with great enthusiasm that those pioneers of Barça are still very close, forming part of the Players Association of the Barça team, which has a team of veterans.
Carme also talks about the growth of women’s football. “They always thank us because they say that without us we wouldn’t have come this far. And the truth is that we liked football, but we had no idea how to play. Me when I go to training and see everything they teach the players and it sounds like Chinese to me. She has grown a lot in that aspect”, she points out, in the preview of a day that goes for her and for all the pioneers.