A first will take place in Brazil, on the night of April 20 to 21, from 2:30 a.m. (French time): Renata Silveira will become the first woman to lead a team of football commentators for a men’s match on TV Globo. The journalist will certainly not comment on a first-rate match but on a third round of the Brazilian Cup between Ceilandia and Botafogo. But it doesn’t matter: the symbol is there because the match will be broadcast live and with free access on TV Globo, the equivalent of TF1 in France.
This first may surprise some viewers because, until now, only men were at the helm on TV Globo. Renata Silveira is 32 years old, she studied to be a sports teacher, then graduated as a sports journalist. She started on radio in 2014 before joining television in 2018. She was first on specialized private channels, such as Sportv and Foxsports.
She quickly stood out for the quality of her comments, especially during the Euro 2020 match between Denmark and Finland, during which Danish player Christian Eriksen suffered a spectacular illness. So far, she has never officiated on the big Brazilian television where the commentators are super stars with their enthusiasm famous all over the world. However, Renata Silveira has nothing to envy them in her ability to shout “goooooooooooooooooooooal”!
The football environment is very misogynistic in Brazil. Moreover, once recruited by TV Globo, Renata Silveira first had to hone her skills by commentating on women’s football matches, such as the Super Cup two months ago between Gremio and Corinthians. She is only the third woman to really break into this field, after pioneer Ana Thais Matos and former referee Fernanda Colombo. But these two never had the job of coordinating commentary for a men’s match on TV Globo.
In the teams of commentators, there is a real hierarchy: first there is the reporter at the edge of the field; then, the “commentarista”, who is a bit of a consultant or an analyst; finally, the supreme position is that of the “narrador” – the narrator – who will tell the match as one describes a fresco, as one writes a novel, almost as one develops a vision of society. Women like the precursor Ana Thais Matos have taken up the position of consultant on TV Globo but none of them had ever taken up that of narrador, this master of the game, before this evening of April 20. If all goes well, Renata Silveira can reasonably expect to commentate Brazil’s games at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar at the end of the year.
If we go back further, the practice of futebol – as we say in Brazil – was forbidden to women in the country until 1979. There were still matches, but a little under the coat in vacant lots. Even today, prejudices are omnipresent. Renata Silveira confided a few days ago to our colleagues around the world how much she continues to “suffer every day from machismo”. Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro is no slouch when it comes to misogyny. Paradox: more than 40% of viewers who watch football on TV in Brazil are… women!