Mayra Ramírez became the most expensive signing in the history of women's football on Friday, surpassing that of Englishwoman Keira Walsh for Barça. The Colombian striker already wears the Chelsea shirt and Levante will earn half a million euros for this lucrative operation. The question now is knowing where all this money will go. The Granota club assures that it will allocate it to the women's section, as Relevo announced, but this clashes with the words of José Danvila, CEO of Levante, in December, when he announced drastic cuts in the section: “We have lived through some wonderful times in women's football but, like the entire club, it has to be reduced. We are going to sustain it to the extent we can and with the structure we can, but today the priority is the survival of the club and moving (the men's team) up to the First Division.” This announcement provoked an immediate reaction from the coach, José Luis Sánchez Vera, who published a forceful message on social networks: “We have come this far…”.
The Levante project is faltering. A history of women's football, with six Queen's Cups and four Leagues under his belt, who is now a victim of his own club. At the weekend they lost second place after drawing at home against Granada (2-2), a recently promoted team, and Sánchez Vera exploded: “We are entering a dynamic or a message that is not appropriate. In the club, in the team, in the players, in the staff... and there are four months left. You can tie, or you can lose, but there are ways and ways.”
Sánchez Vera's contract ends on June 30 and everything indicates that he will not continue at Levante. The Madrid coach harshly attacked the club. “It's all done wrong,” he said: “We've been making bad decisions for a long time. And it all adds up,” he lamented.
The players and the coaching staff are also not immune to the Granota coach's criticism: “From the locker room we also have to be self-critical because I think we are not doing things well. There are footballers who are not performing at a good level,” he confessed.
With this scenario, the future of Levante is completely uncertain. There are many players who are already looking outside the Valencian club to look for a project with more guarantees, but there is still a lot of season ahead and many sporting challenges that the team can aspire to, in the quarterfinals of the Queen's Cup and in positions from Champions: “Power has been shown that we can, but you have to want to. Each player has to go home and has to think and reflect. Also we as a staff, we have to put in a lot more and we have to decide if we want to continue winning games or we want to let five months pass and see what happens in June. I want to think that we are going to think about competing every Sunday from now until June,” hopes the Levante coach, who has a complicated end to the season awaiting him.
