Men’s football still dominating as one of the most watched and popular sports in the world. But, very recently, its female counterpart, women’s football, is starting to grow and gain some recognition in the sport.
One more step on the fight for the equality between men and women in this sport has recently happened, and that’s because the Spanish coach Milagros Martínez will become the first female manager to lead a men’s soccer team in Japan. Something historic.
She will be in charge of Suzuka Unlimited FC, a Japanese team in the Fourth Division of the Nippon country.
“We are pleased to inform that Milagros Martínez Domínguez, a Spanish woman, will be designated as coach of the Suzuka Unlimited FC team” they add from the Suzuka club in a press release.
“I had wanted to go out for a while, but when I was in Primera with Albacete, I thought that was my top,” Martínez confessed to Spanish outlet ‘AS’. “By not reaching an agreement to renew, I reactivated the option and through Yuriko Saeyi, the option of directing the Suzuka arose,” she said.
Milagros Martínez will be a pioneer in the world of Japanese football, as a woman, but in turn will follow the trail left by male coaches Miguel Ángel Lotina, Lluís Carreras, Ricardo Rodríguez and Juanma Lillo, Spaniards who led Japanese teams.
According to the Spanish coach, Suzuka Unlimited was looking for a woman because “they believed that, socially, Japan would welcome very well that a coach could lead men… It is practically unthinkable in Spain”.
“The idea is to show that a woman can train a men’s team, there’s nothing about women’s football that can not be applied to men, and I hope my club will be more trustworthy for women,” she commented.
In the end, she added: “You will take advantage of the time until the start of the season, in mid-March, to visit Lillo and Carreras. “I want to get closer to see how they work and take advantage of these visits to learn about Portuguese football,” she said. She will also visit her good friend Andres Iniesta .
Clearly, a small step for Milagros Martínez, who affronts this new challenge without fear, but a big step for men’s and women’s football who are starting to get closer and more closer to each other, without any problems and always with respect to others.
WOMEN IN FOOTBALL: THE GLASS CEILING 