The 'black power' of the handball team: "It is important that there are black players in the team"
«I remember a game when I was 11 or 12 years old, in the second year of junior, in Casetas, a neighborhood in Zaragoza. On my team there were four or five black players and some parents from the other team started insulting us, it was humiliating.. At that age we didn't know what to do and my father had a collision. Luckily in sport I have not experienced it many times, but racism still exists in Spain, it cannot be denied.. “You just have to see football and what happens so many times with Vinicius.”
Spain begins the Women's Handball World Cup this Wednesday against Kazakhstan (8:30 p.m., Teledeporte) and one of the new leaders of the team is Danila So Delgado, 22 years old, the best right back in the last Iberdrola Guerreras League and black, in fight against discrimination since I didn't know what it was. Trained in Balonmano Colores, a Zaragoza team created to integrate racialized people, her mere presence in the elite is already an example.
«I have played better and worse games, but every time I see a black girl she is looking at me with a shine in her eyes, with hope. The same thing happened to me,” he remembers.
Who was he looking at? Shandy Barbosa, especially. I started playing handball to be with my friends, I didn't like it, but I got hooked watching the national team in 2013 and 2014. I saw Shandy and told my father that I wanted to be like her. I think it is very important that there are black players in the national team who serve as a mirror.
So Delgado, born in Lisbon and raised in Zaragoza since she was a baby, was always called to be international, but in soccer. Both his father, Danilo, an electrician, and his mother, Edy, a stocker, played for the Guinea Bissau national team, his country of birth, and his two little brothers are today footballers.. One of them, Sidney, plays for Barcelona's cadet A team, lives in La Masía and has been called up by the Spain U-15 team.. But she opted for handball. Or rather handball chose her.
EFE
“Since I didn't like it, I thought about quitting and then it helped me a lot when they called me for the Aragón national team, seeing that I wasn't as clumsy as I thought, realizing that I was good at it,” recalls the winger who today measures 1.75 meters, but she was one of the smallest of her teams until she was 15 or 16 years old, something that can be seen in her game.
With power as an argument, this summer he debuted with Spain scoring six goals and in this World Cup he is already responsible. The losses of Barbosa herself, Seynabou Mbengue and Jennifer Gutiérrez mean that the team led by Ambrós Martín is very young, with only one player with over 100 caps, Lara González. “I miss the veterans a lot, because they make you feel safer, but it is an opportunity for the young women to redeem ourselves,” proclaims So Delgado, with the European past in mind.
Then the team could not fight for the medals, although in the two World Cups it did, in the semifinals in both events.. “Defense will be essential,” analyzes the winger, who has a degree in Criminology, a lover of dance and, of course, an example for black girls.