We Breathe Football

 Josefina Martorell, Argentina

Josefina Martorell is a football player from Buenos Aires in Argentina and works for Médicos Sin Fronteras (MSF). Josefina also belongs to the Equal Playing Field initiative - in June 2017 she joined female athletes from around the world to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and set the Guinness World Record for the highest altitude football match ever played. For her Goal Click story, she documented a grassroots women’s football tournament called “Mafalda” in the neighbourhood of Villa Crespo.

Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your football life?

My name is Josefina Martorell, and I am currently 38 years old. I have played football ever since I can recall. However, when I was a teenager (around 15 years old) I was playing in a more serious way for River Plate in Argentina, I was discouraged by my parents who thought that football was a sport “for men”. So, for more than 10 years I did not play, until I realised it was still my passion and more and more women and girls in my country started practising everywhere. I then joined different teams where a lot of my teammates then became my friends. I still play it 2 or 3 times a week.

What did you try to show with the photos? Was there any wider meaning with the photos? 

All the photos are showing my friends and teammates. With almost two years of pandemic and on and off lockdowns a lot of the mystique and sense of community faded out a bit and we are trying to get it back! The photos were taken at different times of a football tournament called “Mafalda”, honouring the famous Argentinian comic book. It took place in Villa Crespo, a typical "porteño", a Buenos Aires city neighbourhood.

Some of the girls in the photos are part of my former team “Doble Pluma” (Double Feather) - we played four tournaments together and won two of them. I tried to show the ambience of camaraderie, sorority, and good vibes that we intend to achieve in this kind of “feminist tournament”. 

Noe is the goalkeeper of a team I used to play with. She is a fierce goalkeeper who would rather get injured than let the ball get by her! She is also fun to be with and when she is not playing you would find her partying!

I showed another of my former teams, Cucumelas, about to start one of the last matches of the season. It was almost summer and very hot, difficult to play but this match was against “La Trinche Carlovich”, one of the best teams of the tournament. All the bets had them as winners, but we showed that sometimes heart and passion weigh more than technical abilities. We tied the match 3-3.

What is your favourite photo?

My favourite photo shows Jose Nicolini and Lourdes, who were my teammates and we are talking after a game. Nowadays, I do not play with them as Lourdes went to live in Patagonia in the middle of 2020 during “the pandemic years”, and she is working with native communities in a national park. Jose joined another team and they are currently playing in different tournaments so I do not see them so often anymore. I miss them and my team!

What does football mean to you?

Football was always important in my life, as it was the sport that I liked the most. Right now it is a place where I hang out with my friends and meet other girls and women. We play, we train, and we discuss other ways to think about sports and inclusion of the excluded population - not only women, but also trans people who are usually left behind.

Why is football so important for Argentina and Argentine people?

Football is part of our culture. A lot of our heroes and public figures are football players (Maradona, Messi and others) and football is part of the air we breathe every day. Children see them as role models, and they want to look like them. However, 99.99% of these icons are men and there are not any female players who are known to the general public. For this reason, girls do not have a model they could think or aspire to become when growing up. That needs to change.

What are the opportunities for female footballers in Argentina?

There are not a lot of opportunities for female footballers in Argentina so as soon as they get an opportunity, a lot of them go to play abroad. However, in the last few years female football has become bigger, public television is even airing it, so more and more people are starting to become interested. Also, for little girls playing football, they are starting to see it as “acceptable” or even cool when not so long ago this was not the rule! I hope in the future we stop categorizing sports (and life in general) as male and female and we start thinking about other categories and other possibilities.

Series edited by Emma Walley.