Ribaltathe director of the Women's RCD Espanyol, has visited today the writing of Mundo Deportivo to take balance to a very hopeful season of the Perico team on her return to the elite and to talk about the future plans of a project that does not stop growing.
Goodbye has been said to the League with a winter to Real Betis to finish in the half classification table. How do you value the season?
What we wanted was to get stability. And it has been achieved. The 6-2 at home was the final climax that has made the fans connect even more with the team and we could live it as a party, because we had already done our homework and we already had the permanence assured. It has been a very fought season, very suffered. We started suffering against rivals above, but the draw against Atlético gave us oxygen and made us believe in all our possibilities. From there, our house has been a fort, with six victories and prominent draws. Next year the slogan that Dani Jarque remains a fort.
He talked about the fans and the connection that has been achieved with players such as Lice Chamorro, Baudet, Arola or Carol …
A very beautiful link has been created. Throughout these more than 50 years of history of female Espanyol there have always been footballers with their own seal. And the most important thing is that we have more and more players in the first team. That is our dream and our goal: that outstanding players want to wear our shirt and want to be here.
“A very nice link has been created between hobby and players and Dani Jarque is a fort”
They also have one of the few coaches of the F, Sara Monforte. There are only she and Ana Junyent, from Levante Badalona.
We are superorgullos to have it because apart from being a great coach, former player of the house, which also adds because I already knew the club and identity, is an extraordinary person. He has done a great job, she is a very intense, didactic coach and is a person, and that humanism convinces us beyond how good coach she is. He has renewed having achieved permanence. We are very excited to continue with her and in which the positive results follow.
Is female vision and talent important in the section?
Of course. The sports director is a woman, Carol Miranda, who has done an extraordinary job, and is Lara Rabal, former player, in the Technical Secretariat. In each of the nine female teams there is at least one woman, whether coach, physio or delegate. It is a criterion that we have had from the beginning: to give opportunities to women in football and not because they are women but because they are valid.
“We bet on female talent. In each of the nine female teams, there is at least one woman”
Apart from the renewal of Monforte, and the Romane Salvador goalkeeper announced today, what has the club planned for the next season? Will you take a step forward?
Carol Miranda is now working on renovations, in signings. We are attentive to several issues. Throughout these days we will present new players. What we want is to maintain the idiosyncrasy of Espanyol, we want it to be a fierce, strong team that wins duels, which in defense is a very compact and especially supportive team.
In a recent interview with Mundo Deportivo, Lice Chamorro claimed that she had come to Espanyol to win titles because she is a big club. Do you also have that idea?
It is difficult right now to think about winning titles because we are consolidated the team in Liga F. We have just arrived. It has been a very hard tour of these three years before arriving up because women's football has accelerated and we were left back and it cost us a lot again to recover the category. There are more and more equipment, there are more and more levels and more budgets to compete.
More and more clubs bet on their female sections.
Women's football is a global, not only state phenomenon, and what we hope is to be able to consolidate, grow a little more and to work there to be what we were. Now we can promise a lot of work and take steps forward. Getting titles is our dream and above all that upload the maximum quarry players.
“We hope to grow every time a little more and from there dreaming that one day we were what we were again.”
Espanyol was a pioneer, winner of six glasses and a league when other clubs were lagging
And in addition, we are the first Catalan team to participate in the Champions League, with a great record that we hope to continue increasing.
In La Cantera Perica players such as Vero Boquete or Marta Torrejón have formed. Is the quarry work important?
Yes, this last year we open a new team, Benjamin. They are very small girls and the truth is that this excites me because I played on the street with the boys and did not have the possibility, like them. In Agramunt, my town, I did not imagine the possibility of being able to play.
“We were pioneer in making a mixed rúa, having advertising on the shirt and a female size”
People ask when RCDE Stadium will open for women's football.
What we want first is that Dani Jarque is a pressure cooker, which is increasingly public. And when you get, then we will think of higher installments. The goal is to open it so that the fans have this opportunity. It already opened in 2019 – before Atlético – and it was a success. In that we were pioneers, as in other things such as when we won the league and went out with a convertible bus with the boys, which was unthinkable, a mixed rúa, or when we put advertising on our shirt or when we did the female size … we were pioneers of many aspects that are now more natural and we are proud of it.
