translated from Spanish: Mara Gómez will go on to history on her debut in a professional tournament

The 23-year-old front will debut as a player for Villa San Carlos, a team that will receive Lanús from 9am and will be broadcast by TNT Sports, at the Genacio Sálice stadium in Berisso, for the second date of zone D of the Transition 2020 tournament organized by the Argentine Football Association (AFA).
“I was able to get the roof off me, I was often limited to certain tournaments, to do certain things in my life. Playing the first game is that, enjoying this that not only does me good but much of society too,” Gomez said in an interview with The Associated Press at the house he shares with his mother and four younger sisters on the outskirts of La Plata.
“It was long the way, there were many obstacles, many fears and sorrows. What one day made me think that I was not going to be anyone, that I was never going to get the chance to be happy in my life today is reversed. I’ll be fulfilling one of the biggest goals of my life. What I thought was indispensable, that was never going to happen,” Mara said, days ago, after obtaining permission from the AFA to play the tournament. The Argentine Football Association (AFA) took as jurisprudence Law 26,743 on Gender Identity, sanctioned in our country in 2012, to enable Mara. This law requires trans people to be treated according to their self-perverted gender identity. Finally, after several months of waiting, Gómez will start for the first time in the team led by Juan Cruz Vitale in a historic day for Argentine football. Undoubtedly, this fact also marks a precedent in world sport as the inclusion of trans athletes is a debate opened years ago, to the point that the International Olympic Committee (IIC) recommended that “an operation is no longer necessary to compete in the branch corresponding to the gender identity they express”.

In Argentina, fortunately, there is that right and that is why Mara Gómez will be the first trans to play in the top category of women’s football.” The struggles were long, of great suffering, but it is not a personal conquest, it is a collective conquest, and clearly marks the hard past that the community and the LGBT collective have,” added Mara, who on several occasions considered football to “save his life.”

Original source in Spanish