spring snow

Soooo I guess there’s this team that’s going to be playing in the Copa de la Reina??? :D

They got a 1-1 draw away to Levante, due primarily to Alicia, who by all accounts stood on her head to keep Rayo in the game, right up to stopping a penalty. As for the goal, it was scored, naturally, by Natalia. Couldn’t see it since the game wasn’t broadcast — sighhhhhh — but the photo sequence makes it look like a beautiful direct free kick, right over the wall into the top corner.

Other notable moments: Rocío Ruiz was there as part of the coaching staff, snazzy official polo shirt and all. Rociiii. ;_;

They’ve got a week off, and then the Copa will be June 8th and 10th. (And no, if you’re wondering, it didn’t used to be this… small scale.) More Rayo posting later if I feel like it… I’m perfectly aware I do this all pretty much for myself. XD

brb lolling at someone thinking they think raul isn’t attractive. ho ho ho! she’s only denying herself. idk what i’m saying, i’m only half awake. RAUL.

don’t worry, she caved eventually. voila. denial gets you nowhere. >:D

this one too.

helpfully blogged for not-so-anon.

Anonymous asked: no, you will not make me find raúl attractive. go away.

my work here is done.

(via raulpictures)

his stupid english just makes me sadder. :(

ambitiouspants:

(poke… poke… oh my goodness!)

Aaaaaaauuugh that sucks!! DD: And I’m really disappointed because I thought other teams were starting to take over Rayo because the league had become really competitive and all the teams had gotten stronger, not because Rayo had serious money/personnel problems. :(((

Yessssssssssssss, more WoSoc to watch! My dl fingers are itching.

Tiny emotional journey there.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely don’t want to talk down the growth that other teams have experienced, because for example Barca’s really strengthened. But it’s not the whole story, sigh.

gpoy T_T

ambitiouspants:

argh how come yours are all nice and neat and I can’t get rid of the link and uuuuuugh tumblr. It’s like the ipod touch I inherited from my sister, it senses that I don’t like it and makes life difficult for me. Whatever, I figured out what makes gifs freeze up, I am satisfied.

Aww, what’s happening with the main club? The men stayed up, doesn’t that mean more money and resources and so on? Or do they have to spend all the money on players to keep the dudes in the Primera Division?

Yeah, I’m not… I don’t know THAT much about Russia. Clearly they’re willing to spend some money on women’s soccer, which is good. But Voronezh and Rossiyanka keep bringing in top players just for their CL ties and then letting them go when they get knocked out (unfortunately their league schedule doesn’t overlap with the CL schedule so these ringers play literally one game) which doesn’t really seem like they’re trying to grow women’s football in the country… then again, idk… I seem to remember Vero saying something about Voronezh getting a lot of support and I seem to remember seeing people at the game that I had footage of, so maybe there is local interest. It certainly seems more than averagely sexist though…

But I certainly got the impression that the women who went to Rossiyanka recently - especially Yael Averbuch - did not have an easy time of things. I can’t remember exactly where I read this so I could be completely wrong and it might have just been poor organization rather than deliberate mistreatment but stuff like trouble with accomodations and transportation, getting woken up for trainings that weren’t happening, not being able to do laundry… Anyway, you mess with Yaya, you mess with me. [Of course if we’re criticizing leagues for the way club organizations treated the players, the US hardly has a leg to stand on… altho I’d like to think MJ was very much out of the ordinary.]

Vero seeeeems to have been ok at Voronezh, although I doubt she’d say much if she wasn’t. I certainly get the impression that Tyreso is more fun but that could be a combination of me projecting my desire to move to Sweden, plus being part of a long-term project and playing with Marta and Seger and probably a few more people who speak English, at least. ::coughcough:: not that I spend loads of time speculating about her well-being or how her life is going or worrying about her or anything.

(my secret is “reblog as text.” :D)

Oh god where do I even begin. To make a very long story very short, they had terrible owners and actually went bankrupt last year. The women’s budget was cut by 65% and some of their best players (see: Sonia Bermudez ;_;) couldn’t afford to stay because the financial situation of a female footballer is fraught enough without instability and budget cuts, ugh. So they’ve been playing a shortened squad all season, and it’s probably not going to get better any soon. The club is doing their best to get out of the mess but the new ownership is, if not financially irresponsible, then not necessarily very good at management and administration. It’s hard to see this happen to a team that won the league three years in a row. :(

Thanks for the lowdown on the Russia situation. D: Now that you mention it I have vague memories of reading about Rossiyanka in particular having money trouble? Either way, I’d heard about various good players going there, but I had no idea about the take-em-and-leave-em situations. ick. (And hey, no judgment here, I know exactly where you’re coming from re: deep personal investment. XD)

also, unrelated to the WCL, but my colleague meretricula would like to suggest the Atletico Feminas channel as another source for full matches - Atleti films all their own and puts them up on youtube. :) (And I meant to mention earlier, I’ve mentioned this on tumblr in the past but another good match to dl is Athletic vs Barca, which was probably objectively better than RVM-RCDE was. I swear I’m done now.)