Football's Pioneers: Elba Selva
Born in Villa Riachuelo, Buenos Aires on 14 January 1945, Elba Selva was the No.10 of the pioneering Argentine team that played at the Women’s World Cup in Mexico in 1971, nearly 43 years after the first female football match was played in Argentina in October 1923.
Starting out playing as a young girl with boys in her local suburb of Lugano, she later, whilst working in a wire factory, began playing for a women’s team, training late at night when the men had finished using the pitch.
With no organised women’s league in place, Selva played exhibition games at weekends in the northern provinces of Argentina, travelling hundreds of miles on a Friday night before making the return journey to the capital in time to be in for work on a Monday morning.
Her performances as a striker with a mean left-foot shot saw her picked to play for Argentina at the Women’s World Cup in Mexico, a year after the men’s event in the same stadia. However, as an amateur, Selva was forced to weigh up whether to leave her job in the factory as well as leaving her two-year-old son behind for several weeks. With the support of her husband, she boarded the flight from Buenos Aires.
Without the organisational backing of the Argentine Football Association, who did not take responsibility for the women’s game for another 20 years, the team travelled to Mexico with a squad of 17 players that had never played in boots before, and with no coach and no doctor.
After losing 3–1 to Mexico in their opening game in front of 100,000 spectators in the Azteca stadium, the Argentines beat England 4–1 thanks to a four-goal salvo from Selva to reach the semi-final, where they went down 5–0 to Denmark. Yet with no television or media coverage at the time, the side’s exploits were barely known about in Argentina.
In the years after hanging up her boots, Selva and the other members of the 1971 team, calling themselves Las Pioneras worked tirelessly to promote women’s football in Argentina.
Their efforts were finally recognised by Buenos Aires City Council when in 2019 the date of the game against England, 21 August, was designated as ‘Female Footballers’ Day’. It was an honour that was extended in 2020 when it was enshrined in national law in time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the match the following year.