Five footballers from Alhama CF that they were not part of the statement issued by 15 players from the squad in which they denied any inappropriate behavior by their coach, randri garciareflect their “disappointment” with the rest of their colleagues and confirm that they have seen “barbarities”, suffered “harassments”, been “humiliated” or felt “fear”.
EL PERIODICO reported earlier this week that the coach had allegedly systematically insulted and criticized the physicality and sexual orientation of the soccer players, facts aggravated by the alleged sending by the preparer of a photograph of sexual content to the entire squad.
The F League club supported its coach and later a large part of the squad did, although five footballers, in statements sent to Europa Press and in which they prefer to remain anonymous, have denounced the situation.
One of them confesses that during her stay in the team she felt like she was in “a prison/dictatorship” and that she knew “perfectly that what was happening was not normal”. This soccer player points out that, “obviously”, they could not denounce anything “when your stalker is your boss”, who she also sees as having a lot of influence on “the whole club and part of the town”. “The worst of all this is being the acceptance of the disappointment that I feel with my environment. I never thought that I could live such embarrassing moments of lack of empathy and dignity,” she says.
“When the time comes to tell testimonies, I will be the first to condemn facts that are false, but also the first to raise my voice very loudly to tell all the atrocities that I have heard, suffered and seen this year,” she asserts.
Finally, this soccer player believes that “the only thing” that encourages her to continue is “the support” she is receiving from “a lot of people”, many of whom she does not know, and remarks that “the truth only exists when it comes to facts that violate basic rights.
fear of the consequences
Another of those affected claims to have “much more support” than she has received from “the same people who have cried for the same reasons” as her, and she does not hide that when the information came out she felt “afraid” for not knowing “what consequences “could suffer.
“I was afraid that all my dedication, the work for which I have fought so hard would be cut short by a situation that I now know is not my fault,” she adds, stressing that all the players have been put “in a very complicated all the time”, not only “because of this type of attitude on a daily basis”, but also because lately they have tried to “manipulate and extract information”.
For this reason, she criticizes that the players themselves have been “confronted” “as if they were two sides”, and that it seems that they are “to blame for everything”. “I have nothing to defend myself against, I have kept quiet a lot,” he adds, opining that the fact that the club has “promoted the creation of said statement by the players only corroborates the continuous coercion that exists here.”
This player, who makes “the most nervous” is that “if you don’t accept the truth, you don’t have anyone to complain to”, confirms that they have suffered “insults, humiliation, disrespect and contempt” and warns that “it is not abuses need to go in 20 directions”. “If there is injustice with just one person, that is more than enough reason,” she points out.
“But if there are still those who say ‘it’s not such a big deal’, ‘it was a joke’ or ‘how sensitive women are’, they are wrong and it hurts. The damage has already been done and the discomfort that comes from remembering over and over again everything I have suffered and lived through here sadly makes me feel the need for it all to end, yes, with one less friend, but with the truth for ahead,” he says.
“We had not come to flirt”
Another colleague does not forget that they have experienced a situation “on the edge of the unimaginable” and that they had already warned her of “the ‘rarities’ or ‘forms'” of ‘Randri’, detailing that personally “the first months of the competition were the worse” and that “the usual thing” when you arrive in a new dressing room is that “a feeling of identity is established”.
However, “they did not want” the players to be related, “much less that love relationships begin due to some kind of ‘trauma’ from the past.” “He even went so far as to mention that we had not come here to flirt,” she adds. All this made her feel “marked for prejudice” and “undervalued as a player.” “I began to think that maybe I didn’t know how to do what they asked me to do, or that she didn’t even try,” she recalls.
Thus, it became “a more than usual situation” that after a game she was left “in evidence in front of the group” despite the fact that she thought she had done “well”. “Perhaps I have not suffered comments as denigrating or dirty as my colleagues, but I have seen them cry for the treatment they received,” she highlights.
Now, she is affected, after seeing that “perhaps for the first time” they notice the support that they have “lacked since all this started”, she wants to “do justice”. “For those who had a bad time, for those of us who live it and feel it today, for those who would live it if this had not happened, and even for those who are still not able to see it,” he declares, demanding that professionalism In his sport he must include “many more things than a minimum salary or facilities” and focus more on aspects such as “forms or emotional management”.
“Screamed, humiliated, ridiculed”
“It is difficult to express in words everything I have felt since I was in Alhama. Everything I am going to express is not even a quarter of how I have felt as an athlete, as a person and above all, as a woman,” she explains. another of those affected, who arrived at training “scared” by “the speech” that she was going to find from the coach and who has reached “the point of not wanting to play to go unnoticed.”
This soccer player states that she has been “shouted, humiliated, ridiculed and disrespected” and that she has had to suffer “in silence” and only with her teammates. She has also felt “coerced and conditioned to speak up” because she had nowhere to turn for fear of “consequences.”
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He also talks about how they have “separated and divided” and that “they have created factions themselves.” “That the club has informed the players of said statement from the beginning is further proof that they continually condition us because it was confidential,” she argues, “disappointed because the people you support in those difficult days have lacked courage , sorority and values” and because they “have felt the same or worse” than her. “I got tired of feeling like this and now I just want to do justice with the truth ahead,” she settles.
Finally, the fifth affected by this situation considers it “very complicated” to explain everything that she has experienced within the club, where she has experienced “uncomfortable moments” that pushed her to “not want to play football.” “The damage and discomfort that this situation has created for us and that even remembering it makes me feel is not going to disappear, but it seemed important to me to make it visible so that it does not happen to more girls,” she concludes.