Karen Díaz, after an interview with us, in Toluca, 2017. Francisco Cañedo
Karen Díaz (Aguascalientes, 38 years old) wanted to be a footballer in a country that doesn’t have a professional league. That couldn’t be. His only option was to train with men on mixed teams, but even that wasn’t enough. Once, during a training session, the referee didn’t come and offered to take the whistle.
What could have been a simple event became his way of life. Díaz directed fast football games, his first salary was 55 pesos ($2) and he began to grapple with the machismo that eats up football.
“I came out of several amateur games crying and I was like, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ I told him in my mind, ‘He’s going to see me on TV and he’s going to swallow what he says to me,'” the Mexican referee told EL PAÍS in 2017.
Now you’re going to be the neighborhood football player who blamed her so much have to be a woman, as a referee and authority, at the World Cup in Qatar in 2022.
FIFA has published the list of 36 central referees and 69 linesmen, including six women: Stéphanie Frappart (France) – already in a Champions League -, Salima Mukansanga (Rwanda) and Yoshimi Yamashita (Japan), Kathryn Nesbitt (USA), Neuza Back (Brazil) and Karen Díaz, the latter two as the only representatives from Latin America.
Karen Díaz during a 2018 Liga MX match in Torreón Armando Marin Paez (Getty Images)
At the age of 25, Díaz decided to enroll in the Mexican Referees Committee. She left her career as an agricultural engineer to establish herself as an arbitrator. In her early years she was the central umpire but began trying her luck as a linesman. She took the pennant and set about earning a spot in Mexican football.
Her professional debut was in 2009, although it lasted until 2016 when she was in a First Division game in a game between Pachuca and León. Two years later and with more experience, she received the FIFA badge, recognizing her as one of the best female referees in her country and in the world.
In 2020, Karen Díaz took a chisel to make history: she became the first woman to officiate a Mexican championship final.
This game between León and Pumas was one of his great consecrations, but it won’t be the last.
The linesman’s meteoric rise has been built on her expertise on the pitch. Also by his eagerness to ignore the insults in the stands and the demands of the players.
Liga MX Femenil, the first women-only professional tournament in Mexico, was created late in 2017 when Díaz was 32 years old.
When it was formed, Karen Díaz was enthusiastic, although she had a word of warning for the refereeing leadership: They want it to be refereed by women only, my plan is to be a men’s referee too. It has stayed that way. “We never tire of repeating that quality matters, not gender. I hope that in the future the fact that there are elite referees in major men’s competitions will be understood as something normal and no longer news,” said Pierluigi Collina, president of the FIFA Referees Committee, on Thursday. From the quarters in Aguascalientes to Karen Díaz’ journey does not end after Doha.
Keep reading more about sports and receive all the informative keys to current events in this country.