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Great piece of work, a couple of quick ideas for expansion:
Reims in France under Pierre Geoffroy must have had a professional element (Anne O'Brien, Rose Reilly and Edna Neillis went there first, before Italy).
Standard Liege in Belgium hired foreign professionals in the 80s like Fery Ferraguzzi, Jane Stanley, Carol Carr.
If not a 'fully profesional' league, Japan certainly had professional foreign players in the early/mid 90s e.g. Hege Riise, Roseli, Anneli Andelen etc. Category:Expatriate women's footballers in Japan
Spain - when R9 signed for Real Madrid in 2002 his then wife Milene Domingues joined Rayo Vallecano, but wasn't allowed to play competitively due to rules against foreign 'professionals' (although her alleged bumper transfer fee and contract was all PR guff: in fact a celebrity branding deal to promote the Dhul dessert manufactured by the team's owners). The rules were changed for the following year, then shortly afterwards Maribel Dominguez signed for Barcelona.
Millwall started giving out YTS places to female players, copied shortly afterwards by Arsenal. The latter were renowned "shamateurs" who hoovered up all the best British and Irish players by offering them paid gigs in the club shop, laundry, coaching setup etc. Sue Lopez says the WFA would ban any English players going to Italy to play professionally, although they seem to have dropped that stance by the time Kerry Davis joined Lazio in the mid 80s.
In Brazil EC Radar were professional in the 80s, then Vasco da Gama and some of the bigger Sao Paulo clubs in the 90s. When I was recently expanding the Formiga article I got the impression that playing futsal was often a better organised and more lucrative option for the national team players in the 90s.
Talking of shamateurism, according to refs at the Irina Grigorieva article, footballers (and hockey/bandy players) in late Soviet times were paid to represent their works teams.
The USA W-League started off amateur, then introduced a semi-pro (or pro-am, as the Americans prefer) element in 1998, when an Elite division was formed with "compensation" paid to participating USWNT players - according to source 3 at the Raleigh Wings article.
Yes Denmark allowed professionalism in 1997, but they had only taken over women's football and imposed amateurism in 1972. Before that Boldklubben Femina had quite big sponsorship deals, the likes of which were subsequently suppressed.
These are great and not things I have any knowledge of or sources handy for; I can do more with them if you have sources for the points that don't point to existing articles. It's a public draft and it doesn't matter to me who adds to it, so if you have sources, go for it! Otherwise it'll be a moment before I can track down citable sources.
The Denmark bit is copied over from the table in Professionalism in association football, where it's the only women's professionalization mentioned. If it's wrong or lacks context here, it's also already wrong/lacking context on a live article over there. I don't have any special insight and didn't do the sourcing on that one.
If the W-League was professional because of the USWNTers in 1998, it was professional because of them in 1995, so that might move the US up further. I'm not sure that the Elite Division/WNTers do it, though, since they were paid by the federation similar to how NWSL federation players worked. For the W-League, it wasn't professionalization at a league, club, or even player contract level, the WNTers had been on salary for years before that and were already between conflicts over those salaries. I haven't found any sources for W-League clubs and players signing professional contracts, including the WNTers, and sources (including that Raleigh Wings article) explicitly call the league "amateur".
(cf. 1 cited on the W-League article, and 2; NCAA players would lose eligibility if on a roster with any pro players. "Pro-am" isn't so much an Americanism as an America-specific dichotomy, because "semi-professional" teams in either the compensated part-time or partly-composed-of-professional-player senses would put NCAA eligibility at risk.)
The Elite division stuff is interesting, though. USL W-League (1995–2015), doesn't mention it. Would love to find more sources about that aspect since I don't see it mentioned since. -01:13, 15 May 2023 (UTC) Socccc (talk) 01:13, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
