cfemale moose. “At least ask them to show you a bathroom to pee sitting down.” While looking at her daughter Bianca, seven and a half years old, on the first day of summer camp in a soccer team – only child among 42 males between six and twelve years old -, Sofia can not say more. That phrase came out imperious but would also like to be a prayer. Bianca wears the uniform – fluorescent T-shirt, knee socks and synthetic shorts – and Sofia searches her husband Daniele’s gaze for something to give her courage.
“Bianca wasn’t going to war, of course,” she says, returning to that day. “Nevertheless we were strangely agitated. Daniele, because having played football for twenty years, he knew how dangerous camaraderie between children could become. Me, because I was afraid some bully might make fun of her. Or question what for Bianca was a crystalline and evident thought like a syllogism: “I like to play football, so I play football“. We were worried about her, like all children sensitive as a seismograph.’
Sofia does not remember when her daughter began to love football. But she keeps in mind that at the beginning of elementary school, some parents labeled her as a “tomboy”. «They were amazed by a little girl who preferred to try dribbling and passing with boys rather than playing with friends. It was above all the mothers who remarked – out of sync – this difference between “males” and “females”».
Women’s soccer. (Getty Images)
“A daughter who plays soccer is not as unusual as a daughter who wants to be an astronaut would be,” observes Francesca Gargiulo, coach of the FC Como Women’s under-12 women’s team. “And yet there is still a lot to fight against stereotypes.” Of little girls who live with the ball attached to their feet and dream of becoming famous footballers, Gargiulo knows many. She was too: with Gaia Missaglia, who later arrived in the women’s Serie A, she played in the Primavera of the Fiamma Monza club. Together they also coached Ac Milan’s chicks (under 10) for a season and wrote the book I want to be a soccer player (The Steamboat).
Sometimes parents are ahead of their time
«When I reflect on the damage that gender stereotypes do in sport, I think of this. How far is there still to go before little girls “soccer players” no longer make the news. Then of course there are the battles for fair compensation and the protection of motherhood. Sacrosanct. However, they involve a small number of professionals» specifies Gargiulo.
«Bianca is one of those girls who wherever she is, at the playground, on the beach, at a friend’s party or in the oratory, starts watching the children chasing the ball, and then, little by little, modestly, starts to mix with the group. To anticipate it, a barely whispered phrase: “Can I play with you?”» says the mother. Does she mean that when she grows up Bianca will be a footballer? Sofia and Daniele, anticipating the times a little too much, asked her several times if she wanted to choose football as a sport, train every week, play the first tournaments. Once they even accompanied her to a company open day. But Bianca was not particularly enthusiastic about it. For Sofia it was a surprise.
“Probably we parents, especially we mothers, sometimes make the mistake of thinking that since today an activity has become more accessible, closer, than it was in the past, then our daughters must throw themselves into it, enthusiastically embracing everything that was forbidden to us. And instead things never work well when they are transported from one era to another». This, continues the mother, “my daughter taught me: she simply likes to play with friends and companions. Point. She doesn’t give a damn about our equal opportunity claims. In fact, for her the fact that there are other females or not is not relevant, she doesn’t even notice it. Just as color blind people lack the photoreceptor that allows them to recognize red, so her gaze lacks this differentiation ».
Psychological training
The coaches Francesca Gargiulo and Gaia Missaglia, authors of I want to be a soccer player
The girls coached by Francesca Gargiulo, on the other hand, are quite determined. «They didn’t sign up for football just to do, in the wake of more obvious paths, for “females”, such as dance, gymnastics or volleyball. Often they want it badly. And yet, despite the greater motivation, or perhaps precisely because of it, with them the coach concentrates “not only on technical-tactical training, but also on psychological training”. Football is a team sport that trains both the perception of oneself and that of the context, both the individual’s talent and collaboration, both physical and mental readiness. «The more attention is paid to the individual, without leaving anyone behind, the more the group works well» highlights the coach. Gargiulo, who has a degree in sports psychology, tries to encourage moments of confrontation in which the girls can give oxygen to the less explored part of themselves, the one that sometimes does not come out in rigidly disciplined contexts such as some schools or families can be: « This is particularly true with 10-12 year old female athletes entering their adolescence. I believe that sport represents an excellent opportunity to encourage them to have confidence in themselves and in their abilities, and to have the determination to pursue their dreams. Whatever they are.”
The importance of models
In short, the real goal is not to become good and famous like Sara Gama, the captain of the national team, or Cristiana Girelli, Juventus striker. Gargiulo is convinced of this, as is Gaia Missaglia, the former teammate and coach with whom she wrote the book for aspiring female players. Where they chose to tell the story of Letizia, an ordinary little girl who wants to play soccer.
“What we would like to reach readers is that in football there is room for everyone, not just for the great champions” comments Gargiulo. «The same players of the current Serie A who have written their own biographies – observes Gaia Missaglia – underline that they have often had everyone against them. But for a large part of today’s girls the reality is already different. They can play more easily, and believe that this passion can turn into a profession if they want to».
Bianca, on the other hand, made a different choice, definitively displacing her parents: she has been part of one for two years basketball team consisting of 21 boys and 4 girls. She prefers it (also) because until the fifth grade, with exceptions, boys and girls of the same age train and play games together. Her company, however, organizes once every two months a workout only for athletes, bringing together those who belong to different categories and have heterogeneous ages.
«As a feminist – says Sofia – at first I was a bit skeptical. I thought they wanted to create a reserve for rare animals. Then I changed my mind. Their coach noted that during this “special” female training, the girls are more daring, cultivate courage and tenacitygain more self-confidence, demonstrate greater physical strength and endurance, and a much more combative spirit. And then they bring this determination back to the field, when they are together with the boys».
Today Bianca is in fourth grade, at halftime she is no longer the only girl to run after the ball: «It is as if with his behavior he had legitimized his companions to get involved, experimenting with a new passion. The cool thing? In front of the gates no one says anymore “Bianca is a tomboy”». A sponge ball has redesigned the chessboard.
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