| By Toby Rappolt
Local women soccer player Maria Murnane is living in Buenos Aires and playing for the River Plate women's team. I was very interested in her experiences in Argentina. Below you will find her responses to several questions I asked her. Here is her story.
Maria: I came down to Buenos Aires in January by myself for a three-week vacation and liked it so much that I never went back. I subletted my apartment in San Francisco and decided to stay for a year! I wasn´t working anyway, so I figured why not stay here and practice my Spanish and totally change my life! Once I made the decision to stay I got a part-time freelance job translating articles at a travel magazine, which pays me so little it is barely worth mentioning, but the people are great and I have fun there. Then I started asking around for where I could play soccer, and I found out that in Argentina, specifically Buenos Aires, women either play semi-pro or they don´t play at all. There is nothing at all like the leagues we have at home. So luckily I met the coach of River Plate, and I had tons of time on my hand, so I was able to start training with them, and luckily they liked me and signed me up! Getting a visa was a huge pain, but now I am legal and am able to play and am enjoying it. Our home field is the nicest field I have ever played on. Ever!
Our team is really good, but the competition isn´t that great. I think the Mad Hatters (local Golden Gate Women's Soccer League team) would beat them, at least the Mad Hatters of last fall (about eight of us didn´t play this past season), but it would be a close game. The Vikings would probably beat them too.
But they really treat us like pros here. They even pay us! It isn´t much, but it is so cool to get paid to play soccer! We have a coach, a fitness director and a doctor, all three of whom come to every practice! We also have an equipment manager...they give us all this great adidas gear and sweats to train in, and a huge bus to take us to the games. We have to shower at the club and eat there on games days, so it is a huge time commitment. With Sunday games it is four days a week, about six hours per day because everything in Argentina takes FOREVER!
Toby: You are working as a translator. How much Spanish did you know before you went to Argentina?
Maria: I majored in Spanish in college and lived in Spain for my junior year, but I hadn´t really spoken it much at all for years. So on paper I was fluent but certainly rusty. Now I am totally fluent again and sometimes even dream in Spanish!
Toby: Have you gone to a professional men's game? (One of my dreams is to go to a Boca v River super classico.)
Maria : I went to the Boca/River semifinals of the Copa Libertadores at Boca! It was absolutely amazing. We froze to death, but it was totally worth it. The game was even stopped for about 20 minutes when the players got in a huge fight on the field. Everyone was going crazy. I actually have a CD with some pictures of the game on it (I got my film developed just to be able to email photos to friends). If I can find a computer with a CD reader I will email you a couple.
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One of the reasons I really wanted to go to the game was because there was an article in an English newspaper a few months ago that listed the 10 sporting events every true sports fan must witness in his lifetimes. Number ONE was a Boca/River game at Boca!! Toby : Have you seen River's men's team train?
Maria: I see them occasionally at the club when they train on the main stadium field. We don´t train there, and they only do once in a while. I usually only know they are around when I see all their cars in the club. It is funny because they are really nice cars for here, but they aren´t anything like you would see in the Lakers´ player parking lot, ya know? Here the richest players drive Volkswagon Jettas, Golfs, the occasional two-door BMW. It is just a different world.
Toby: What is a typical training session like for the team you are playing on?
Maria: We train on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Tuesdays and Thursdays we have to be at the club at 2:30 to weight train for an hour. Fridays we have to be there at 3:30. When we get there they give us a jersey, shorts, socks, and a sweatsuit, all Adidas with River Plate and Budweiser logos.
The fitness coach has a workout card for each of us to fill out, and we work out upper and lower body. After the weight training we leave in a bus for another complex with about 8 fields. The problem is that we never know when we are going to leave. It is really frustrating because we just wait and wait for the coach and doctor to show up, which sometimes isn´t until after 4. And when they do show up late, there is never any explanation for why they are late, and no one asks questions. This is one of the things that drives me crazy about Argentina. No one asks questions.
Anyhow, we go to the other field, and usually on Tuesdays we just run. Thursdays we do running drills and some scrimmaging, and Friday we scrimmage. The practices usually go until a little before six when it gets dark, and then we head back to River Plate to shower. Usually I get home around 7:30, which makes for a long day! But overall it isn´t any more of a workout than a soccer practice for the GGWSL would be, and usually it is even less running because the pace of the practice is just so slow, and the scrimmages are never very long, and overall the girls here really don´t like to run. They all think I am crazy because I want to work out hard to stay in shape, which makes me laugh because I think about the girls on the Mad Hatters who would go running before work on the same days that we would have practice after work!
Toby: What other differences do you see in the soccer culture of Argentina especially when compared with the United States?
Maria: One thing that really bothered me when I got here, but to which I have grown accustomed, is how the players criticize each other on the field, I mean they full on yell at you for a bad pass or for not making a run or whatever. On the Mad Hatters if a someone goes around yelling like that, she usually doesn´t last very long on the team, and I imagine it is the same way on most of the teams in the GGWSL. (I can´t speak for the men´s teams.) The culture of women´s soccer in the states is much more nurturing and supportive than it is here. Here they are really competitive with each other on the field. They are good friends off the field, but they slide tackle and pull your shirt in the scrimmages. Those are things I wouldn´t even consider doing to my teammates in San Francisco.
The other thing that continues to drive me crazy is all the acting that goes on when people get knocked around. I mean COME ON PEOPLE. It is a contact sport! The girls on my team get bumped a little bit and immediately fall to the ground, hold on to their ankle (why is it always the ankle?), and wait for our doctor to go running out to attend to them. I have seen this scene repeated over and over in games and scrimmages, and not once has anyone been hurt enough to have to come off the field for more than 30 seconds. Not once! It is just ridiculous.
Along those lines, female players here are babied much more than in the states, and as a result they are sort of wimpy about playing with minor injuries. I am used to playing with huge bruises on my calves, or a sore ankle, or if I have a cold, or whatever. We all just sort of suck it up in the states and deal unless we are really hurt or really sick. But here if the players experience even a little bit of discomfort they won´t practice.
It isn´t a matter of lack of commitment, in fact quite the contrary, because they will come to practice and watch, but they won´t practice. And the coaches seem to encourage that mindset. I am not sure why is that way, but I find it really interesting. I don´t tell them if I have a minor sprain or headache or whatever because I don´t want them to tell me to "take it easy."
And the last thing about the culture is that soccer is everywhere. Everywhere! There are always two or three games on TV at any time of the day, and their players here are as famous as Shaq and Kobe, or Montana and Rice. When the national team plays, it is huge news and on every TV in every bar. When our national team plays, even in the World Cup, I would say 99.9% of the country has no idea.
I went to an after-office networking cocktail party the other night, and if you can believe it I met this American girl who said she had heard of me! She said she has lived here for three years, and it has always been her dream to try out for River or Boca, but she never did, and now she is moving back to the states to get an MBA. She said she can´t remember where but somehow she had heard that there was an American playing for River and that she was so excited to meet me and that I am her idol! How hilarious is that? At the same event I met the guy who runs Boca TV, a channel here that is 100% Boca. He wants to interview me! ha ha ha
Hey I will forward you an article that a paper in Patagonia wrote about me a few months ago. Did I tell you I was interviewed by a newspaper and two radio stations when we went down there to play friendlies? It was hilarious! Being a foreigner has its perks.
Toby: Where did you grow up playing and what is your playing history before moving to Argentina?
Maria: I grew up in Palo Alto and started playing soccer when I was seven. I actually turned down a spot on the team at Cal because I was pretty burned out then and just wanted to experience college as a normal student. But if I had known how many times since then I would be asked "did you play in college?" I probably would have played just to avoid dealing with that question! I never really know what to say because if I say "no" people assume I am not a good player, but if I say that I could have played but didn´t, it makes me sound a little conceited. so basically I hate that question. When I went to grad school at Northwestern I played on their team for two years, which was club but a lot of fun because almost all the schools in the Big 10 were club then.
I joined the Mad Hatters in 1996 because a couple of my good friends from high school were playing on it, and I played 16 straight seasons before moving to Argentina. I love that team, and I love the coach, and I made some of my best friends in the world there. The team has changed a lot over the years as people have moved on with their lives, but it has always been a really a special group to me.
I have a sister (Monica) who is a year younger than I am, and I love playing with her. We´ve played on the same summer co-ed team together since we were teenagers! A lot of people who see us play together think we are twins, which always makes us laugh.
Toby: Thank you very much Maria. |
Restraining Zones-Thirds 
Restraining Zones-Halves 
5v5 with Bumpers 
