• Ignacio Quereda The hidden vexations of the former women's soccer coach

The journalist

Danae Boronat

(Tarragona, 1985) did

not expect

that the first time she faced the conception of a book,

Don't call them girls, call them footballers

, she was going to have to face the miseries of a silenced era.

But while he spoke with dozens of those soccer players who made up the Spanish team led for 27 years by

Ignacio Quereda, he

saw how the testimonies, many of them stark, coincided in their rawness.

How many testimonials have you collected in your book? Almost 5

0. There are people with whom I have spoken who have simply helped me to have information that does not appear in the book.

Why have you never wanted to investigate too much in the Quereda stage as a coach?

I came across this topic by chance.

I started asking about the 1996 letter in which the coach's resignation was requested and the stories came out.

Always very similar and in different women.

They had never told it out of fear.

They admit that they were always afraid of being removed from the national team, of what they will say, of retaliation by the Federation.

What do you think was the role of the then president of the Spanish Football Federation, Ángel María Villar?

From what they say, Quereda was Villar's protégé.

Villar was knowledgeable about many things, he knew perfectly how this man acted.

He knew the situation they were going through.

I don't know if they directly transferred him to Villar, but everyone who was in the Federation knew that the players were not comfortable with him.

Generation after generation had submitted letters, complaints, raised their voices, and no one was listening.

Villar was the perfect accomplice Quereda had.

He spoiled everything and was delighted with him.

What's more, he agreed with his way of leading footballers.

The soccer players denounce humiliation and humiliation, physical and mental.

Alicia Fuentes relates that, at the age of 17, Quereda pinched her butt.

She told it relatively naturally, without giving it any drama.

It didn't seem serious to him.

When I would cross-examine and say: 'Alicia, but was this common?

Has it happened to more people? '

She would say, 'Yes, yes.

Of course'.

This was normal.

And I would come back: 'But did this seem normal to you?'

And he would answer: 'Well, it was what there was at that time.'

She wasn't the only one who got a pat on the ass and things like that.

For them it was not strange at all.

Alicia was surprised because she was very young and stood very much in the elevator.

But I think she didn't tell anyone.

I'm sure he didn't go to any classmate and said: 'Look what just happened to me.'

The players kept it quiet out of shame, because they believed that this should seem normal to them.

Alicia had just arrived at the national team, and did not know the

modus operandi

of the selector.

Marta Corredera explains that she had a

piercing

in the navel and that the coach lifted his shirt.

She told me that it was very uncomfortable for her.

It was one of the few that rebelled.

'I take off the

piercing

But don't lift my shirt again. '

Had they assumed a normality that was not normal?

Totally.

All.

It is tremendous.

I could'nt believe it.

When Ainhoa ​​Tirapu said that the coach asked her for cleavage from the front, and not from the back, she thought: 'One more of this guy'.

When sometimes a classmate was ridiculed in a group, some would bite their tongues, others would burst into tears in the locker room, they told each other that they did not have to put up with it.

Quereda did not only do it in private with each one, he also did it when they were all there.

That shows you how unpunished and how free he felt to make such comments and acts.

Nobody controlled him.

Absolutely nobody.

Was there no control mechanism?

Of course not.

They assumed it was something they had to put up with.

That as they were going to the national team, they had to endure that.

And of course, if you transfer that to men's football ... If a single player denounced that the coach had insulted him, how long would he last in office?

This was an abuse of power.

Quereda was the one who ruled in women's football.

It is not like now.

He did and undo in everything.

It was his hunting ground.

He commanded all teams.

When Quereda left, the soccer players had to apologize.

That is the most serious thing.

Even Del Bosque once came out to defend Quereda.

There is a lot of corporatism.

That they wrote that letter in 2015 asking for his resignation was ... [Boronat takes a breath].

They were told they weren't shapes.

They tried to tell the coach that if he left, nothing would come out.

But he threatened them and told them: 'Others have already tried before and I took them off.'

That they had to apologize shows you how rotten the system in the Federation was.

The new coach, Ángel Vilda, entered and the first thing he did was charge the captains of that dressing room.

They were the ones who had the upper hand.

Among them Vero Boquete, Natalia Pablos, Sonia Bermúdez ... The best.

And Vilda did not summon them again.

Vero knew that it was not for a sporting matter, but because he wanted to have the dressing room clean of the most critical voices.

I asked Vilda why she stopped calling them, and she replied that it was for sports reasons.

Vero Boquete knows that no, he wanted to have the dressing room controlled.

And, for this, the most warriors had to go outside.

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