Fear. Distress. Anxiety. That is what the footballers who have been part of Alhama have experienced for years. A Labor Inspection resolution This is confirmed by: “On the part of the coach, Randri García, inappropriate behavior has been carried out that has affected the dignity of the majority of the players (68%)”, turning the locker room “into a hostile work environment”. For the first time, footballers victims of these situations break their silence and they recount in EL PERIÓDICO what they have experienced inside that locker room.
“What I feel when I think of returning to the Alhama locker room, which was everything to me, is fear and anxiety,” confesses Andrea Carid, one of the players who has suffered the humiliating treatment of Randri García. “You start to doubt yourself. You can have the greatest self-esteem in this world, that when you receive this type of affirmation day in and day out, you also begin to doubt who you are, if you truly have the level, especially when the results are not accompany”, Carid relates with pain. “You ask yourself: Is it me? Am I too sensitive? He uses your weaknesses so that you don’t rebel. Or so that you understand that it’s your fault for feeling that way”Add.
repeated performance
Comments and disrespect have been a constant in the Alhama dressing room. “He has called his colleagues fat, indiscriminately, every day. It was a rare week that there was not a comment about the physique, a comment about what you eat or stop eating. We have stopped posting things on Instagram because he was chasing you in social networks: ‘What if where are you What do you do and with whom? Why do you eat that… Don’t you see that with how fat you are you can’t afford to eat that??’, says Andrea Carid, who is on sick leave after what happened.
He uses your weaknesses so that you don’t rebel.
andrea charid
“Have to come down [de peso]. You’re so fat you can’t even make love. He told me that I had one between my legs dick bigger than yours. That I was so ugly that I didn’t know how women looked at me. It was a constant. Comments of a political nature, of character homophobic, misogynistic and racist“, says Erica, who perfectly remembers each humiliating sentence received.
The players admit that these behaviors have been going on for years within the club, but that the entity’s family organization chart has allowed Randri to get away with it. “The one in charge is the father, the president, the woman is the sports director, the mother also has a position, and he is the coach. Who do you go to to tell him that this is happening?”, he says Erica, who has been out since April 3 after a situation that has left consequences.
“They wanted to throw me out because they knew that they had made my contract wrong and that that year I had a lawyer. In training that day, Randri was talking to a player who is a minor and who had not been allowed to go to a concentration She was sad and the coach told her in a bad way what was happening, that she had been sulking all week, that if what she wanted was to play for Barça, he was going to make it for her. I got into the conversation and Tamara [la mujer de Randri] He heard me and started yelling at me who did I think I was. And at the end of the first lap of practice, Randri told me to get off the field. While she was talking to the union, Tamara came with the physio, who was cutting a small bottle, removing its ass. They locked me in the locker room and told me that I wouldn’t come out of there until I peed in the bottle.. They forced me to drink five bottles of water. Sitting there, they wouldn’t let me get up, they wouldn’t let me do anything“, he concludes.
Within a few days, Erica requested medical leave and began psychiatric and psychological treatment. “I still lived in Alhama and had nightmares, I didn’t sleep and I woke up many times at dawn. I was afraid to go to the Mercadona in case I ran into someone. Once I met the coach’s mother at the bank and she started to tell me things. As a result of everything I have become afraid of being locked up, of getting on the elevators”he confesses, sad, for the situation he is managing “as he can”.
And a very hard part to admit, says Carid, is the normality with which these situations end up living. “You hold on because you normalize it. And you hold on because you also want to have a future in the world of football. And you don’t know if what this man is telling you is the truth or not. ‘You’re not going to succeed in another team if It’s not here. It’s that I’ve discovered you and you, if you go elsewhere, you won’t perform the same. It’s that you’re here thanks to me.’ And you start to think, well, it’s still true. But of course , when a person from outside comes and tells you: ‘Hey, this doesn’t happen in the other teams’. And you say, okay, we’ve come this far”.
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When EL PERIÓDICO uncovered the case on April 17, 2023, the situation was very tense at the club. Some players, like Carid, were pointed out after the vast majority of the squad recorded a video defending the figure of Randri García. “I felt unprotected, I felt in a hostile environment, I felt that I was not welcome. I felt unsupported and that people who had been my friends were turning their backs on me. Still, I don’t blame them. They are as much victims as I am. I don’t want the focus to continue on us, on dividing us more, since the focus is on the harasser and that’s how it should have been from the beginning. I am looking for no other than to give visibility to something that unfortunately continues to happen in the world of football, and that I would like the bad things I have had, and the consequences that this continues to have for me right now, not happen to anyone else. That is why it is really important to give voice to this”, says the player, who says that Randri called her when the situation was made public asking for explanations.
Now, the Labor Inspection resolution agrees with them. Although it lightens the feelings, it does not eliminate the pain. “On the one hand I’m happy, I’m not going to deny it. In general terms there are seven out of ten footballers. I feel relief. I have the feeling that they believe me, that I wasn’t imagining it. Relieves, is appreciated and you feel recognized“, confesses Carid. “But obviously the damage has already been done.”