The first women’s soccer team in Spain, whose heiresses have just won the World Cup with Jorge Vilda as coach, was directed by Paco Bru, the first to discover the sidereal projection of this sport among women and a mythical character who today would be astonished to contemplate the sad leading role of Luis Rubiales, current president of the Spanish Football Federation, who on the same day he covers himself with glory due to the worldwide success of our women soccer players, he falls down an abysmal precipice due to the rudeness of his non-consensual kiss to Jenny Hermoso. And for his macho and badass subsequent reactions that have caused the huge scandal these days.
“Cádiz, November 22, 1931. The transatlantic ‘Buenos Aires’ docks in the port from New York. On board are about fifteen tired-looking young men dressed in trench coats and felt hats. Although it may seem like it, they are not Al Capone’s henchmen but footballers from a team that no longer exists”, is the beginning of one of the episodes of the podcast ‘Black Bracelet’.
“Racing Madrid helped sow passion for football in the Spanish capital, maintained a bitter rivalry with Real Madrid, built the Vallecas field and, threatened with bankruptcy, he bet everything on a tour of the Americas: it would be the most eventful in world football”, he continues. The leader of that pioneering team was Paco Bru, the man who was everything in football at the beginning of the century xx. He also directed the first women’s soccer team in Spain.
The Spanish Girl’s Club
Coups d’état in Peru, revolutions in Cuba, riots in stadiums in Mexico and shootouts with gangsters in the United States follow one another with vertigo in a chapter recorded by ‘Brazalete Negro’ to describe ‘Racing’s suicide tour’, which reveals the absurd life of Bru, footballer, journalist, coach, referee, manager and the first ‘mister’ in 1914 of a women’s football team, the Spanish Girl’s Club, an eleven contracted by the Women’s Federation against Tuberculosis of Barcelona. Some “tomboys”, according to the chronicles of sports journalists of the time.
Fathers, brothers and husbands presented their complaints. There were discussions. Football was a tomboy sport, they said. Paco Bru answered them: ‘sportwoman’, not a tomboy, ‘sportwoman’. https://t.co/0mgTPzKegA
— Panenka (@RevistaPanenka) March 8, 2022
Bru only had 45 days, according to the news at the time, to prepare these girls for the first match, which was played in the field of RCD Español.
Bru required the girls to play in shorts—no prissy clothes—and shower together. A team that doesn’t shower after the game was not a team, for this lover of a sport that the English they had exported to Spain.
The days before the women’s game it was thought that hardly any people would go. But there was a good entrance. The benefits went to the Women’s Federation, in its fight against tuberculosis, and that attracted many women in a devilish debate about whether or not soccer was for girls.
Although born in Madrid in 1885, Bru was one of the most important football figures in Catalonia before the Spanish civil war.
In 1902 at the age of 16, He started at Internacional, a Barcelona team where his brother Federico also played. With this club he won the Torino Cup in 1904. Later he defended the shirt of the two greats of Barcelona, Barcelona and Espanyol.
With Barça he played 201 games and scored 13 goals. He won 3 Catalan championships and the first Copa del Rey for the Barça club in 1910. With Espanyol he won two Catalan championships. In a third stage in Barcelona he achieved a new Catalan championship. He was also part of the Catalan National Team between 1904 and 1915.
After his retirement in 1916, Bru reinvented himself as referee.
In 1920 he was the first national coach of Spain, He participated in the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, where he won the silver medal. Later he trained various Spanish teams such as Español, Madrid, Girona or Granada.
Related news
He was also commissioned by the Cuban administration to lay the foundations of soccer in Cuba and to achieve the adhesion of the federation to FIFA. Over there He also trained the Asturian Youth Club. In short, Bru led the Peruvian National Team during the 1930 World Cup.
He died in Malaga in 1962, at the age of 77, always proud to have bet on women’s football despite the misunderstanding and contempt of men. The first World War cut short the promising trajectory of those women ahead of their time whoLike those of today, they fought against prejudice and machismo without ever giving up.