Coach Alla Filina about women's football and sexism in sports

IN RUBRIC "Case" we introduce readers to women of different professions and hobbies that we like or are simply interested in. In this issue, we talked with the football coach and co-founder of the first Moscow amateur football group for girls Girlpower #tagsport Alla Filina about why the Russian Football Union doesn’t like women coaches, how they break children in class and what happens to women’s football in Russia.

Since my childhood, it was interesting to watch football - and not so much to watch how teams play, how much to pay attention to the performance of technical elements: strikes, passes, feints. While everyone was following the bill, I wrote up close-ups on videotapes and reviewed them a hundred or so times: my parents still remember that I’ve overwritten all the family records — instead of matinees, all of them are Ronaldo and Luis Figo. I was the captain of the city basketball team in my native Pyatigorsk, and for the first time I had a question about football when I was ten years old: the coach approached my father and said that he would very much like to see me in the women's team that they were going to do - just saw as i play in the yard with the boys. However, nothing happened: the girls were not recruited, no funding was found, and at fourteen I myself went to Moscow. Here, I temporarily gave up my sports career, graduated from the university and plunged into the sphere of management and entrepreneurship - now I am the director for the development of the partner network of the online cinema Tvigle.ru.

A year and a half ago, I realized that I wanted to transfer further the knowledge that I have, and I went to the High School of Coaches. There I received a UEFA license, then I went to the #tagsport kids club, which my friends founded, and then we opened the girl group Girlpower #tagsport. There is still no women's football community even in such a big city like Moscow, and Girlpower is the only amateur female group in the capital: you can come here from scratch at any age and start playing. Our audience is adult girls, many have children, a career, and for them this is a story about new horizons - “cool, and I can learn this,” about mutual understanding on the field and beyond, about energy. In November we went to Turkey for our first international gatherings: the girls against whom we played are 18–19 years old, they are six years in football, now in the second division. Of course, Girlpower lost 0: 6, but I, as a coach, was delighted: for people, many of whom went to the field for the first time in May and touched the ball, everything was very cool.

Most coaches in Russia still believe that “the child needs to be broken”: if he doesn’t break, everything can, and if he breaks, then he’s not an athlete. These are remnants of the Soviet era and a reflection of what is happening in society in general: coaches yell at children, insult, humiliate, “break”, and parents believe that this is normal, because they, too, raised it. People who bring children to school for the first time first talk to me with short chopped phrases, and then, having gotten closer, they are surprised: "Wow, it turns out you can talk to a football coach like a normal person!"

Must pass centuries to dry up the flow of irony against girls who play football or just watch it

For children, and indeed for any person, everything must go through motivation - so that it is really interesting or at least that the child understands why a specific exercise is needed, even if he does not like it. Moreover, in our country, coaches have no serious knowledge in the field of psychology: many do not know how to work with children during puberty, when a child rushes like a cruiser at a speed of 300 km / h and life looks different every morning. For example, I, in addition to basketball, had been playing tennis for a long time and successfully, then my coach lost credibility to me, and when I was fourteen years old, I just got up and left. Any shouts and threats here will not help. In Europe, the training of any athlete is always a joint work of the coach, parents and staff psychologist. We still still have junior teams - the level of national teams - there are not always psychologists, and if there is, they are doing the same things as psychologists in schools, some kind of strange diagnostics, and coaches are trying to push some of their tasks on them teams. The guys are really 14-16 years old, they have a terrible competition to get to the next level, pour water or glue to another on the boot - in the order of things, and then suddenly a psychologist comes and starts telling: “Children, you have to love each other ". What then to speak with reference to teams of a lower level or to other sports, if even in football, where all possible means are directed to us, does this happen?

Professional women's football in Russia exists and, by the way, looks good on an international background, but we have a very sad view of it: there is no flow of people willing, there has never been a culture to prepare female soccer players. And I really do not like the expression "women's football" - so they say only in Asia and in Eastern Europe. Yes, the physical data of men and women are different, but this is the same game; because no one talks about the special "women's tennis". Centuries must pass in order for the irony streams to flow to the girls, who play themselves, work in this sphere, or just watch it. We were at the training camp in Turkey with the #tagsport kids team. They played with the team of Azerbaijan, and according to custom, after the match, the coaches shake hands. Their coach did not shake my hand, saying that they have not accepted this. I, in general, was not offended: I understand that it is not only a matter of football, but also a difference of cultures. Another example - in the summer we went with the whole Girlpower team to watch the World Cup in a huge bar, we had several tables in the center of the hall, and around there were about two hundred men. At some point I realized that all the views were not on the screen, but on us - they really did not understand what we were doing here at all.

There is football, and there is Russian football - and these are different stories. For example, we have extremely large dropouts in the learning process, which is not in Europe. Of the thousands of sports school students in our country, one or two people reach a level at which they can somehow earn money. In Europe - up to 30-40%, depending on the club or academy, while children in the preparation process do not break either the psyche or health. No wonder they have so many good clubs. In Russia, if a child is injured - it is written off, no one is engaged in rehabilitation, this is a problem of unhappy parents. And it’s good if the child is twelve years old at the moment, not eighteen, and he didn’t decide not to go to college, because he plays football, because in this case everything, the person’s life is broken.

The level of professional training is also unpredictable: I regularly watch people with a license higher than mine for the position of trainers in #tagsport - so many of them do not use even the most commonplace knowledge related to physiology, for example, they ignore the heart rate. We also do not have transparent mechanisms that allow a child to go all the way from a beginner to a professional. The Russian Football Union considers its main task not to develop football, but to protect the interests of the national team, but players do not get into the national team from a vacuum! Why is it that only one Russian player in Europe plays, and he also left as a small child? Why not buy talented young football players from Russia? It's not just about money, but also about learning. For 20-30 years, the training system in Europe and America has gone far ahead. We in the children's group #tagsport, of course, also focus primarily on Europe: we already have contacts with Manchester City and Bayern Munich.

Now my goal is to get the next UEFA license, which allows you to work as a head coach in the second division clubs or simply as a coach in the first division clubs. I passed the exam in the Russian Football Union in November and didn’t pass, but when I wanted to appeal and asked me to show my work to understand what mistakes there were, the process dragged on - and I gently hinted on the sidelines: all this nonsense, I work with men to anything, and if I, of course, really want to, I can train women's teams. They said: “Nobody will take you to work with men,” having determined with a firm hand to the female half of humanity.

This is absurd: yes, girls and boys have different physiological capabilities, different parameters, but this is the same tactic, the same technique - it turned out that they are not considered so in the Russian Football Union. I know that anyway I will pass the exam for this license and for the next one too, if not here, then in Europe - according to the rules, I can do it in any UEFA member country. Of course, it is more difficult and more expensive - you have to leave, for a while to quit and Girlpower, and work. But for me it is not a question of personal ambitions: a documented professional level makes it easier to build contacts with Western clubs, which means that children in #tagsport will have even more opportunities to find something interesting for themselves.

Photographers: Alexander Karnyukhin, Anna Shmitko