The Blaugrana Claudia Pina has left the concentration of the Spanish under-23 team. The Catalan international thus follows in the footsteps of her Barça teammates Mapi León and Patri Guijarro, who yesterday left the senior team's training camp in Valencia. “There have been no ways or means to return. We are not in a mental condition to return,” they explained as she left the concentration hotel in Oliva. The two soccer players appeared before the press visibly affected by the situation experienced in the last few hours and acknowledged that it was being “quite difficult and hard.”
The three FC Barcelona players have already returned home and this morning they joined the team's training in the sports city. Mapi León, Patri Guijarro and Claudia Pina resigned from the national team a year ago, when the '15' conflict broke out and they missed the last World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in which Spain was proclaimed champion. “It is a reality that for Patri and me the situation is different from that of the rest of the colleagues,” they confessed yesterday.
Pina, as well as the Real Sociedad goalkeeper Elene Lete, together with 'the 39' signed the letter in which they asked not to be called up by the national team. While 20 of their teammates were called up for the senior team, the two of them received the call from Laura del Río with the under-23 team. The rest of the internationals, including Barça player Bruna Vilamala, will continue with the team.
The U-23 team is in Portuguese territory to play the first of the two friendlies scheduled for this national team break. Laura del Río's team will play against Portugal in Oeiras this afternoon (7:00 p.m., Spanish time) and on Monday they will face France (8:30 p.m.) in Las Rozas.
Claudia Pina, Mapi León and Patri Guijarro are the only three internationals who have returned home. The rest of those called up decided to remain with the team after committing to the Federation not to leave in exchange for a written and signed commitment that the restructuring they have requested from the federation would be carried out.
The first movement after the Oliva summit was the fall of Andreu Camps, general secretary of the RFEF and the true brain of 'rubialismo'. Luis Rubiales' right-hand man has been responsible for the most aggressive strategies against the soccer players. The architect of the most threatening statements and the promoter of the list in which 20 internationals who had asked not to be called up were included.
His departure is the first, but not the only one expected after the entry of the Government, through the president of the CSD Víctor Francos, has allowed the situation to begin to be unblocked. A three-way CSD-players-RFEF commission has been set up to monitor the “imminent changes” that were promised to the internationals. Integrity, Communication... with some of the areas most highlighted by the players, who want all the people who participated in the pressure on Jenni Hermoso out of their structure.
