{"id":372385,"date":"2024-08-18T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/?p=372385"},"modified":"2024-08-16T15:32:04","modified_gmt":"2024-08-16T18:32:04","slug":"from-brazils-football-fields-to-saudi-arabias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/from-brazils-football-fields-to-saudi-arabias\/","title":{"rendered":"From Brazil\u2019s football fields to Saudi Arabia\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 A week ago, football coach Lindsay Camila arrived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to lead the Ittihad Ladies Club<\/a>, the women\u2019s team of the country’s most popular club, Al Ittihad. She is still adapting to her new home but says she\u2019s already noticed a desired from the Saudis to invest in growing and professionalizing the sport and obtaining good results on both women\u2019s and men\u2019s football fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before coaching football teams, Campinas-born Camila was a player herself. She played in Brazil, Portugal, Spain and France. She left the fields in 2006 due to an injury and has since focused on coaching. In 2012, she coached boys at a football club in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which was her first experience in the Arab world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Results in Brazilian football, projection abroad<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

She had two stints as assistant coach of the Brazilian women\u2019s national football team \u2013 first from 2019 to 2021 and most recently from 2023 to 2024. She was coach at S\u00e3o Paulo state\u2019s clubs Jaguari\u00fana and Ferrovi\u00e1ria, as well as Atl\u00e9tico Mineiro and Bahia, which she left to take over Ittihad. She was the first Brazilian coach to win Copa Libertadores, with Ferrovi\u00e1ria in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chance to coach Ittihad came in the first half of the year, through manager Jorge Rodrigues, who\u2019d previously tried to take her to Mexico. \u201cWe talked [with Ittihad], and it was a good offer, not just money-wise, but the club\u2019s project to structure out women\u2019s football was sound,\u201d she says. Camila said football has been increasingly professionalized in the Arab country and has even taken talents from other professions. Her team features players who have backgrounds in medicine and accounting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She doesn\u2019t have any Brazilian athletes in her team yet but plans on soon bringing people who already know her work at her side. Meanwhile, she\u2019s working on the Saudi championship preseason. On Saturday (24), she and her athletes will travel for a 20-day season in Spain. The tournament runs from September 26 to May 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both in Brazil and Saudi Arabia, she says, there\u2019s been a growing investment in women\u2019s football. Her challenges in Brazil, Camila says, included small infrastructure, which increased as she took over positions at the national team, Ferrovi\u00e1ria, Atl\u00e9tico Mineiro, and particularly at Bahia. At Ittihad, the team has a very professional infrastructure that used to be from the men\u2019s team, including gym and locker rooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have access to a very good field, all materials, wardrobe, three physiotherapists, two assistant coaches, a physiologist, a fitness trainer. So all the club infrastructure I had in Brazil, I found it here,\u201d she says. She says she\u2019s still adapting and meeting people but wants to \u201cwork hard\u201d and share her knowledge and experience with Ittihad on and off the field<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat I always say wherever I go is that I\u2019m going to give my all to get good results. If they come, wonderful, and even if they don\u2019t, I try to leave a seed of what was done,\u201d says Camila. On the experience of working in Saudi Arabia, the new head coach of Ittihad says her first week has been great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more:
Women\u2019s football: A Brazilian named Al Ittihad coach<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated by Guilherme Miranda<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a9Gustin Marcarian\/Pool\/AFP<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brazilian coach Lindsay Camila takes on the challenge of leading the Al Ittihad women\u2019s team. In an interview with ANBA, she said one of her goals is contributing to professionalize the sport in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2317,"featured_media":372345,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[50549,50589,32886,9534,50588,43943,44206,50590,9595,43950],"class_list":{"0":"post-372385","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-al-ittihad-2","9":"tag-atletico-mineiro-2","10":"tag-bahia-en-2","11":"tag-brazil-en","12":"tag-ferroviaria-2","13":"tag-futebol-feminino-en","14":"tag-jeddah-en-2","15":"tag-lindsay-camila-2","16":"tag-saudi-arabia-en","17":"tag-womens-football"},"wps_subtitle":"Brazilian coach Lindsay Camila takes on the challenge of leading the Al Ittihad women\u2019s team. In an interview with ANBA, she said one of her goals is contributing to professionalize the sport in the country.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}