International Women’s Day: world’s best footballer Aitana Bonmati calls for ‘lots of changes … there is not equality’
- Bonmati’s 2023 featured World Cup and Champions League success, and the Ballon d’Or Feminin award for the planet’s best player
- But the Spain and Barcelona star says there is much still to achieve off the pitch, urging football ‘to invest in us, and give us the opportunity’
Women’s football “needs a lot of changes” to achieve equality with its men’s counterpart, according to the world’s best player Aitana Bonmati, who said she and her contemporaries were “fighting for everything we deserve”.
Barcelona playmaker Bonmati last year won the Fifa Women’s World Cup with Spain and the Ballon d’Or Feminin, awarded to the planet’s leading star, before last month scoring in the semi-final and final of her country’s Uefa Nations League triumph.
But speaking on the eve of Friday’s International Women’s Day, she told the Post that ambitions such as fighting for Olympic gold this year took second place to a desire to “help women’s football grow”.
“I always say, what I do on the field is important, but what I do off the field is more important,” Bonmati said. “I am in more houses and reach more people, and can help women’s football grow.
“We need a lot of changes, I do not want to say only one thing [must change], because we need to do a lot of things to keep growing. It is better than a few years ago, but there is not equality [with men’s football].”
Bonmati recently voiced her frustration over Spain’s Nations League semi-final against Netherlands, which doubled as a shoot-out for Olympic qualification, being moved from Cadiz to Seville at 16 days’ notice.
Saki Kumagai, the Japan captain, was similarly critical of the Asian Football Confederation last month, after her team received three days’ notice that the away leg of their Olympic qualifier against North Korea would be staged in Saudi Arabia.
“We are fighting globally, and coming together, all of women’s football to push … to fight for what we deserve, and for equality,” Bonmati said. “People always talk about salaries, but it is not only salaries.
“It is important for the institutions [clubs] to make good investments in women’s football: to invest in us, and give us the opportunity to grow up. We do not want only words. We need facts.”
Bonmati grew up idolising the peerless Barcelona trio of Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta and Xavi Hernandez, “because I did not know about women’s football”, but is steadily acquiring a comparable treasure trove of prizes. She is a two-times Uefa Champions League winner with her Catalan club.
“Winning the World Cup makes us a more a reference for a lot of people in Spain,” she said. “Girls and boys have female [football] idols. In the past, those women idols did not exist.
“But we still have a lot to do in Spain, and we have to keep fighting as players for the treatment we deserve.”
Spain have emerged as the leading force in women’s football. Barcelona are targeting a fifth Champions League final and third title in six years.
The national team, desperately unlucky to lose to eventual champions England in the 2022 Uefa European Championship quarter-finals, avenged that defeat in last year’s World Cup final, before beating Euro semi-finalists France to win the Nations League.
Bonmati insisted that, to be “complete”, Spain must win next year’s European competition, and this year’s Olympic title in Paris.
“I do not have an Olympic medal, so it is important for me to compete in the Olympics, and to try to win,” she said.
“I have a lot of trophies, but I want to be more complete. We have to go for the Euros. The senior team has never won it [Bonmati’s Spain won the 2015 under-17 tournament], and we have to fight for an Olympic gold medal.”
Regardless of their increasing supremacy, Bonmati insisted Spain were “far away” from replicating the hegemony that the United States, the 2015 and 2019 world champions, formerly enjoyed over women’s football. The Americans were Olympic champions in 1996, 2004, 2008 and 2012.
“We did great over the past year in Spain, but to compare us with the USA is big words,” Bonmati said.
“We are far away from what the USA did over the past 30 years. We have to continue winning, and proving we are the best team.”
