It’s not just about what happens, but what people think happens. It is one of the basic precepts of communication, an essential starting point before addressing the conflict between the soccer players of the national team and the Spanish Federation. A fight that has transcended football to place itself at the center of the media spotlight. A game of perceptions where the emotional plays a predominant role and that permeates all strata of society. To the point that citizen understanding of a legitimate struggle for rights can evolve into weariness with an endless war. Have the world champions lost the image battle? Here are some answers.
He knows a lot about the firmness of the internationals, determined to make structural changes in the City of Football. Reyes Bellver, lawyer for the majority union FUTPRO. “It is always beneficial to maintain the same line. And the players, for a long time, have had things very clear, with a well-thought-out strategy. I understand that it can tire public opinion, but they are fighting to change a system and are going to maintain the fight until the end,” this specialist in Sports Law, recently elected as a CAS arbitrator, explains to EL MUNDO.
What carpets had to be lifted in Las Rozas? How should change really be forged? These questions had been floating around for some time, without the footballers clarifying anything. Until last Thursday, Irene Paredes y Alexia Putellascaptains, spoke openly of “decades of systematic discrimination”, in the form of endless bus trips, early morning flights and a treacherous mode of operation: “We have been treated like girls.” Immediately, the detractors charged the bayonet. Why had they let so much time pass? Because right now?
“On this question I want to be very clear,” Bellver says. “Just because these demands have not attracted the attention of the media before does not mean that they have not existed. I have attended many private meetings between the parties, both from this team and from previous international ones, such as at the time of Vero Blowjob. And if they have now reached the point where they did not want to be summoned, it is because there was no progress in the negotiation. “It has been, like the F League strike, a last resort.”
That strike by the soccer players, which would affect the first day of the championship, served to establish a minimum salary of 21,000 euros per year. But it also proliferated annoyance. This same week, Miquel Iceta, acting Minister of Culture and Sports, congratulated himself because things “that were not done” in the RFEF “will be done”; while Carlos Flores, a Vox deputy in Congress, tweeted a photo of the internationals under the heading “They don’t represent me.” Was so much wear and tear taking its toll?