The 26-year-old Italian female
footballer Elena Linari discussed living in Spain in this period
as a professional athlete amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Lipari, who plays for Atletico Madrid, told ANSA that
"initially I was frustrated, I would almost say disgusted, by
how here they hadn't learn their lesson from Italy", which was
hit hard first by deaths linked to the novel coronavirus, but "I
was excited to see workers go back to their worksites in front
of my home after a three-week halt".
Linari, who also plays on the Italian national team under
Milena Bertolini and who helped make women's football more
popular last summer even in Italy, told ANSA via an online
interview from Spain, that she had chosen "Spain because I did
not feel free to be myself in Italy. There, if you play football
and you are a woman, with all due respect you are 'wasting
time'."
"On March 11 we interrupted the Algarve Cup with Italy and I
came back here, where I have been living for a year and a half,"
she said calling the situation "paradoxical" since whereas
severe restrictions had been placed on Italy, "here people were
just walking around normally, without even a mask".
But now "things are better", she said.
Linari told ANSA that she was doing yoga and that she was
being helped by a trainer from the Atletico team, who "gives me
a program and twice a week we meet up in a videochat. Spanish
football is developing personalised programs for us women
footballers. The menstrual cycle is a decisive factor. In
Barcelona they do hormone testing and regulate training on this
basis."
Nonetheless, she added, "we play and train in a male way,
which is not easy. The important thing is to talk about it
normally, like the time I didn't have my period for three months
and then I had a very heavy, painful one. Speaking clearly about
this with the coach was key to resolving it."
Linari is also in the frontline of the battle for equal pay
and rights for women footballers.
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