How the girls came to play a central role in the project. Parejo speaks

There was a time when the Italian women’s national team always thrashed Spain. The matches were rarely close affairs, and Betty Vignotto, the pioneer of our women’s football movement, always scored at least one goal against the Spanish side. Then, in the second half of the 1980s, the Spanish side snatched their first draw, and much later, in 2013, they secured their first historic victory against the Azzurre.

In the past, however, the best Spanish female players were drawn precisely to the Italian league. Ángeles Parejo arrived in our country in 1988, having been spotted by Torino alongside her twin sister Isabel. Ángeles was eighteen years old and was already part of her national team’s squad. In Italy, she played for 23 seasons, winning four league titles, five Coppa Italia trophies and two Super Cups, and scoring some 538 league goals and 814 across all competitions. No Spanish female footballer has ever achieved so much here. Today, she coaches Polisportiva Ossese in Sardinia, in the Eccellenza league.

“At the time, I was really sorry to leave my large family,” Parejo tells Il Foglio Sportivo, “but Spanish football was far less developed than Italian football. Now it’s incredible to see how the situation has been turned on its head.”

Parejo has spent her entire footballing career in Italy, often having to take on a second job to make ends meet: she worked as a barista in the mornings before heading to training in the afternoons. It was also through chatting with customers that she learnt Italian so well right from the start. She had already made her debut for the Spanish national team at just 17, going on to play a leading role years later at the 1997 European Championship (scoring three goals). In between, however, there had been a long spell of absence: the Spanish Football Federation preferred to avoid calling up players from abroad, perhaps for financial reasons. “Back in my days with the Spanish national team, the women played in the same kits as the men,” the coach admits.

Her family, where everyone was passionate about football, always encouraged her to pursue her own passion. “Back then, my schoolmates didn’t come out onto the street to play because their fathers and brothers wouldn’t let them: there was a strong macho mentality,” recalls Parejo, “which hasn’t completely disappeared in Spain today, but has certainly improved a great deal. In fact, it’s now common for young boys to look up to Aitana, Putellas and Hermoso as role models. And in Spain, seeing a little girl playing football has been the norm for a few years now. In Italy, the situation is certainly improving, but we’re still lagging behind. We should ensure that this becomes the norm here too.”

Amidst the collective craze for ‘cromos’ (stickers) at Spanish newsagents, the La Liga F album is always on display alongside the men’s version. In Madrid, at Puerta del Sol, where the Legends museum traces the history of world football through historic shirts and memorabilia, in the final room, alongside Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Vinícius Jr, Modrić, Pedri and Neymar, there is also space for the shirt worn by Alexia Putellas in the quarter-finals of the 2023 World Cup against the Netherlands and for her 2022 Ballon d’Or. Recently, there has been talk that the Spanish Football Federation is in the process of finalising an agreement with a specialist clinic to allow female national team players to freeze their eggs.

The Spanish women’s national team has also managed to move past the Luis Rubiales affair, which led to the resignation of the president of the Real Federación Española de Fútbol after he kissed Jennifer Hermoso without her consent during the celebrations following their World Cup victory. “An inappropriate gesture, typical of a patriarchal environment. It’s right that those who make mistakes should face the consequences. The players reacted as they should have, asserting their rights.”

Parejo also maintains that, in footballing terms, the two national teams – the men’s and the women’s, both reigning world champions – share the same identity. “The two national teams are very similar, both tactically and technically; in fact, they adopt the same principles of possession and pressing. They almost seem like the same team. Both sides really play like a club; they are extremely close-knit and deeply attached to the ‘camiseta roja’.”

According to the Spanish coach, now an Italian by adoption, “we need to follow the example of Spanish men’s clubs that believe in women’s football, and have serious people on the staff to build from the youth academy upwards. Building a successful development programme requires, above all, patience. With young people, you mustn’t just be coaches, but first and foremost educators. A few years ago, Barcelona opened the doors of La Masia to girls from the youth academy and the first team, who now train in the same facilities. That’s how it should be done.”

With over 800 goals scored in Italy, a footballer like Parejo would not have needed to work as a barista today. In a league like the Spanish one, characterised by impressive peaks in attendance at big matches, the highest salaries remain the preserve of the top players. There is no shortage of players heading abroad in search of more lucrative contracts, as demonstrated by Jennifer Hermoso’s decision to move to Mexico in 2022. Meanwhile, Real Madrid Women have signed an Italian player, bringing in former Juventus player Arianna Caruso from Bayern Munich.

“I would have done anything for football,” concludes Parejo, “I was even bullied: just to be able to play, I pretended to be a boy. Spanish football is professional today, and female footballers have what we didn’t have. The girls in this national team were born to play football, just like some of us back then, but they have contracts and sponsors. If I’d been born now, with my mindset and coming from my family – very humble but very close-knit – I’d be a millionaire in today’s football.”