Colombia Women win battle to keep soccer league professional

Women’s soccer in Colombia will remain professional after officials had planned to cancel it.

On Tuesday evening, Colombia’s professional football association, Dimayor, voted to maintain the professional status of the national women’s league. It also created a commission which will find out how to make it financially sustainable.

Football officials in Colombia had announced last week that the 23-team league would be downgraded to amateur status due to its poor economic results.

However, players and the local media pressured officials to reconsider, arguing that the cancellation of professional soccer would leave dozens of players without jobs and end the hopes of thousands of girls playing in lower divisions.

The third league season starts in August and Dimayor President Jorge Enrique Velez has since come out and said:

“We have collected the proposals made to us by the Minister of Labor Alicia Arango and the director of Coldeportes Ernesto Lucena in the sense of creating a commission that will immediately begin to study and develop the professional league from next season.”

Even though there have been a handful of companies willing to sponsor the women’s league, it will still have to undergo huge restructuring in order to become financially viable.

Colombia is one of just three countries in South America with a professional women’s soccer league, along with Venezuela and Brazil. The Colombian league was launched in 2017.