Women's football: the pioneers of football are celebrating their anniversary

Madrid, December 8, 1970. Women's football was once again breaking into Spain with a pioneering match in this discipline, which had been silenced for decades. The event was played at the Boetticher football field, located in the Madrid neighborhood of Villaverde. Against all odds, that meeting managed to gather no more and no less than 8,000 people in the stands. On the field, there were two of the first clubs in this category, Sizam and Mercacredit (later called as Olímpico Villaverde), which laid the foundations for a women's football that continued to grow, this time without restraint, to this day.

Considered by the media as the first party in this category, the truth is that this consideration has certain nuances, finding a precedent almost 60 years earlier, in a meeting played for charitable purposes on June 9, 1914 in Barcelona. In that duel, two teams from the same and newly created club called Spanish Girl's Club were measured, promoted by Paco Bru (former Barça player and former coach in Antwerp 1920). With hardly any references in the historical recordsThose were the first bars in Spain of women's football, which faded during the interwar period. You could say that there was a women's football before and after the dictatorship …

From Paco Bru to Rafa Muga, who led the new era of this category in our country. The Extremaduran maestro acquired great experience as an organizer of women's tournaments and went down in history as the first Spanish coach in this category, directing the so-called 'clandestine team'. A distinction that is due to the fact that the Spanish team did not initially have the recognition of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, which paid off its debt in November 2019 with a tribute to all the pioneers and to Muga himself.

Muga was the great promoter and organizer of that first match that opened a new era to all the women who loved this sport. And, 50 years later, the Extremaduran leads an emotional tribute. Same place, same time and same place. Half a century later, the same field opens its doors in an intimate event that will take place today (12:00) with the aim of highlighting the great effort and subsequent achievement that that event meant for Spanish women's football.

That game took place amid the surprise of a society submerged in a long and already weakened dictatorship. “At the end of the event I was forced to go through the Villaverde Civil Guard headquarters,” recalls Muga. Those were years in which women, relegated to household chores, began to raise their voices and even claim their place in this sport. Outside of the debate on whether it was the first game in history or not, There is no doubt that he laid the first stone in current Spanish women's football.