Real Madrid is one of the increasingly few top European soccer clubs that don’t have a professional women’s team and the club says among its plans to launch into esports and build a theme park, it won’t field a women’s team any time soon.
In a speech during Real Madrid’s most recent general assembly, club president Florentino Perez spoke proudly about how esports will be part of the club’s future.
Mr. Perez also talked about plans for a possible Real Madrid theme park to be built in the Spanish capital.
The president took his time to address most of the concerns brought up by club members, but when asked about when Real Madrid was going to create a women’s team, Perez didn’t answer.
The topic, the club later said, wasn’t a priority at that moment.
The question still hasn’t been fully answered by Perez or by anybody else. The club that calls itself the best in the world remains far behind other European teams when it comes to women’s soccer.
“It’s 2018, every modern institution should be thinking about its position on gender issues and gender equality,” former FIFA Council member Moya Dodd told The Associated Press. “When such a big team has no accommodation for women players, I think it leaves a big question mark. And in time, history will be the judge of whether maybe they should have acted sooner on this.”
Real Madrid is one of the few top clubs still without a women’s team in Europe.
In Spain, Atlético Madrid has been the team to beat in recent years, having won the last two women’s league titles. Barcelona made it to the quarterfinals of the women’s Champions League this season, along with clubs such as Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, and Chelsea. Manchester United recently became the latest English club to add a women’s squad, and Roma, AC Milan, and Inter Milan did the same in Italy. In Germany, Borussia Dortmund remains without a women’s side.
The only team that wears the “all-whites” uniform in Spain’s women’s first division is the Madrid Club de Fútbol Femenino, which has nothing to do with Real Madrid and was created by a businessman disappointed that his daughter couldn’t play for the powerful Spanish club.
