The Sports Tomorrow Congress (WOM + N) 2021 the sports innovation congress organized by the Barça Innovation Hub, has started with force bringing together more than 600 attendees in a first day of sessions that has had sportbusiness and Sports medicine as thematic axes, and that has had the participation, among others, of the players of the First Team of Barça Women , Marta Torrejón, Mariona Caldentey and Caroline Graham Hansen.
In the sessions of the business program, which have been hosted by the Roma room, different topics related to the promotion of women’s football and the new business opportunities it represents have been discussed, as well as the increasingly prominent role of women in sport that has to lead to equal opportunities and effective representation In this sector.
The leadership of women has been the center of the debate in which the players of the first team of Barça Femenino have participated Marta Torrejón and Mariona Caldentey, which have been accompanied by Rocío Pomares, Director of the Department of High Sports Performance of FC Barcelona. In the session they explained how their maturation process has been from the grassroots to reaching the professional peak based on the evident inequality compared to men’s football. Caldentey and Torrejón They have stressed that leadership off the field -relationship with staff, management- is almost more important than on the field of play and that the leader is based on the trust and respect of the entire group. Caldentey and Torrejón have personified in the figures of Vicky Losada and Carles Puyol, respectively their ideals of leaders.
On the part of the Club, he has also participated in this first day Markel Zubizarreta, sports director of Barça Femenino, who together with Stefano Braghin, director of the Juventus women’s team, discussed the growth of the transfer market in women’s football. In the session, the differences between women’s football in Spain -professional- and in Italy- which will not be professional until next season – and the need for all leagues to have the same regulations to compete under equal conditions were exposed. Markel Zubizarreta explained how the transfer system is getting closer and closer to that of men’s football and this is demonstrated in the process to register female players – much more agile than in the past – and in the increasingly common presence of professional agents for young women players.
Markel Zubizarreta, at the Sports Tomorrow Congress
Other prominent participants in the sportbusiness program have been, Ebru Koksal, Non-Executive Director of the Professional Footballer’s Association (PFA), an organization that groups footballers from the Premiere League, the FA Women SuperLeague and the rest of the English football leagues. Mariel Koerhuis, General Manager of the Johan Cruyff Institute, Maria Tato, Director of Women’s Soccer of the RFEF and Amuary Vergara and Nelly Simon, president and sports director respectively of the Club Chivas de Guadalajara.
Regarding the medicine and physiotherapy program, the lectures – held in the Auditorium 1899 – have dealt with, among other topics, the particularities of the female athlete’s body, which are the most common injuries and the methodologies to treat them as well as the differences and similarities that exist between men and women athletes with regard to the type of injuries.
The Doctor Gil Rodas, Medical Director of the Barça Innovation Hub, the Dr. Eva Ferrer, Medical Manager of the Women’s Team, Toña Lizárraga, Head of the Nutrition Area, and the doctors of the first team Lluis Til and Xavier Yanguas have been some of the representatives of the Club who have participated in this first day
In this line, the Dr. Ferrer He explained the working methodology that the Club follows with Barça Femenino and how it has worked with the players to achieve better performance from the athletes. All this, through the monitoring of medical records, nutritional counseling and also psychological monitoring. Likewise, he has explained the work carried out to help reduce injuries by analyzing, for example, internal and external workloads, in order to work on his balance. Finally, the Dr. Ferrer has also emphasized the need to have more data on the effect of the menstrual cycle on the performance and performance of women and sports practice and has made reference to how disorders such as dysmenorrhea or endometriosis can affect and how it can help have scientific evidence when accompanying the athletes throughout the season.
Other prominent speakers who have participated in today’s session have been Celeste Geertsema, one of the most important sports doctors in the world and who was the first woman to act as an official FIFA doctor in a World Cup -Russia 2018- and Kirsty Elliot Sale, Professor of Physical Education and Female Physiology at the University of Nottingham.
The medicine program closed this Monday with a round table to discuss the rehabilitation process, and with the session “From the athlete’s perspective – what is needed to achieve the highest level in women’s sport.” The latter has had the intervention of Caroline Graham Hansen, a Barça Femenino player, who has reviewed her career, from her beginnings in the world of football to being a professional. And it has also addressed issues such as the importance of mental aspects in a recovery process, feeling safe and the importance of learning and understanding this process, or the need for more information related to how a woman’s body works, in order to be able to take care of yourself and perform at the highest level.
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