“They want us to keep our mouths shut”

The modest women’s football CD Covadonga is going through a difficult crossroads. The players and the club’s management have been fighting a relentless war in recent months that has led, this week, to the expulsion of the players Alba Montes and Sandra Gonzalez after the club accused them of disrespecting them on their social networks. The case has mobilized the fans, who have turned to help and show their solidarity with the squad.

“Before training we received a call from the president informing us that we were out of the team due to alleged insults and disrespect on social networks,” he explains. Alba Montes in statements to ‘La Voz de Asturias’. The players denounce that “they are trying to silence them” to cover up the reality of what is happening within the club. “They are expelling all of us who have had the courage to show our faces. They want us to keep our mouths shut,” reiterates the soccer player.

It all started as a result of the complaint of the players, who accuse the Covadonga board of “discriminatory actions” with respect to the men’s teams.

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In 2018, the Covadonga football club created its women’s division, a senior team that debuted in Regional. The players were told that they would not be paid that season but the intention was that they would do so in subsequent ones. But it has not been like that and the tension has been increasing.

On December 3, the soccer players themselves wrote letters of protest to the Oviedo City Council, the Asturian Soccer Federation and the General Directorate of Sports to publicize the situation.

The squad denounces that they are required to pay a monthly fee to cover the cost of a new kit that they never received. In addition, they assure that the sports director of the club told them that there are three unprofitable teams: the Junior Division of Honor, which neither pays nor charges, the Regional Men, who do not pay and charges, and the Regional Women, who do not charge but you have to pay. “Our feeling is that we have to pay for the losses of the División de Honor,” he says. Alba Rodriguez, one of the team captains. A true comparative offense.

And they explain that they have received threats from the president of the club, Cabal Curro, of the style: “If you don’t pay, you don’t play and I’ll take you out of the competition.”

The players, after the Christmas break, already jumped onto the pitch with shirts and banners in defense of their claims and in support of their former coaches, also dismissed, Jessica Garcia and Olaya Gonzalez. That same afternoon, the president, Cabal Curro, decided to expel the player from the club Sheila Zapico, that was the first step of a war without truce.