The fall of Costa Rica's Lionesses and rise of the pioneers

Four women are responsible for ending one of Costa Rican football's longest unbeaten runs: Melanie Monteagudo, Carol Sanchez, Cristin Granados and Yesmi Rodríguez.

All four of them found the net for Sporting FC against Alajuelense on Thursday, inflicting a first defeat on the league champions in almost1 1/2 years. And not just any defeat: a 4-1 thumping.

Under head coach Wilmer Lopez, the "Lionesses" had remained unbeaten in their previous 44 games, a national record that saw them become the first team in the country to win three league titles in a row.

That run is now over, but it's not hard to see why it developed in the first place, with the women from the city of Alajuela at the foot of the Poas volcano benefitting from significantly more professional facilities than their competitors.

While the rest of the teams in the league generally play in tiny stadiums with around 3,000 seats, Alajuela's Estadio Alejandro Morera Soto can seat up to 17,000 spectators. Only archrivals Saprissa have a bigger stadium, while Alajeulense also have their own kit deal.

Now, however, going into the final day of the regular season on November 6, things aren't looking quite so rosy for the Lionesses. Having temporarily dropped down to third in the table, they currently find themselves second behind surprise package Sporting.

The fact that the table is tighter and more even than it has been in recent years is good news for the upcoming playoffs.

As in many countries in central and southern America, the football season in Costa Rica is split into two parts: the apertura and the clausura. In both parts, the eight teams play out a regular season with matches at home and away before the top four progress to the playoffs to determine the champions.

At the moment, while Europe's leagues are just getting starting, Costa Rica's clausura is reaching its climax, with more variation and geographical intrigue than ever before.

Geographically, Costa Rican football has always been a rather exclusive affair, with almost all the teams based in the economic and political hub in and around the capital, San José, or at least from the broader province.

The exception to the rule are the traditional giants Municipal Pococi from the coastal province of Limon in the east of the country, who are currently two points adrift of a playoff spot.

Municipal's star player, 28-year-old Kimberly Vargas, is emblematic of much of the league. The defender isn't just a footballer; she also works on building sites while simultaneously studying engineering.

Education, work and professional sport: a common combination for Costa Rica's female footballers.

How racism created Costa Rica's footballing pioneers

Hardly anyone in Europe is likely to have heard about women's football in Costa Rica, and yet the country is a global pioneer. Women were playing football here at a time when, in most other countries, women were banned from playing the sport.

Historian Chester Urbina Gaitan has documented women playing football in Costa Rica as early as 1924 and says that the opportunity arose from the country's greater role in the world market during the 19th century, predominately through coffee production, which created an urban bourgeoisie.

While women were passively involved in the sport in roles such as receptionists as club parties or as cooks, several women's teams were founded in 1926. Costa Rica was, as a result, likely the first country in Central America in which women were on the field of play.

Some teams are said to have even used the indigenous flag of the Mapuche as their own, creating an anti-imperialist platform in the sport.

Racism made all of this possible. Urbina Gaitan theorizes that women were able to enter this male domain with relative power because the racist state ideology wanted it that way. Women had to be fit and capable in order to bear children for their own "race."

This nonsense changed over the following decades, but the country's pioneering role in the sport remained. In 1949, Deportivo Femenino Costa Rica FC was founded — likely the first all-women's football club on the entire continent.

In the following years, women from Costa Rica ventured abroad to Panama and El Salvador in order to spread word of the game. In the 1960s, sports manager Franklin Monestel founded the first national league for five teams. In West Germany at that time, women were still forbidden from playing football. Some colonial continuity has ensured that all this is almost unknown in Europe.

Recently, the women's association (UNIFFUT) published a book on the history of women playing football in Costa Rica. In it, stories like that of Ligia Torres emerge. Torres traveled 2 1/2 hours on horseback and eight more hours on the bus from her village every weekend to play in the first division. In the end, she became a champion.

Sadly, after being nominated for the national side, a landslide prevented her from traveling and the chance to represent her country never came again.

Times have changed. Costa Rica have qualified for the World Cup for just the second time in their history and will play in Australia and New Zealand next year. The hope is to make the knockouts for the first time ever.

The times of traveling to the game by horseback are also long gone — as, perhaps, are the days of Alajuelense's 44-game unbeaten runs.

This article was translated from German.