The 2024 season of the Chilean women’s league begins this Saturday with its twenty-fifth edition with Colo Colo as the main protagonist, not only for being the defending champions but for leading the transfer market with the hiring of a three-time Conmebol Libertadores Femenina champion, the Brazilian Ingrid Pardal.
The squad led by Brazilian Tatiele Silveira, runner-up in the Copa Libertadores and the first champion coach of the Brazilian women’s tournament since its change of format in 2013, has set the course to obtain its third consecutive title, which would be the fifteenth star of the club.
The Albas will have a season in which they will also face the Copa Libertadores, where they have higher goals after reaching the quarterfinals in last year’s edition.
To fulfill their mission, the Colocolinas were reinforced with the 30-year-old defender Pardal, who signed for two seasons after playing with Sao Paulo and previously with Corinthians with whom they won three Libertadores in 2017, 2019 and 2021.
The 19-year-old Uruguayan forward Guillermina Grant also arrived, who has just been a top scorer in 2023 with 19 goals playing with Nacional de Montevideo.
The two-time champions were supposed to open the season with the premiere against Everton, the last promotion champions, but the duel has been postponed because the Viña del Mar team would be home at the Sausalito stadium, which is being used as an operations center to attend to the emergency in the Valparaíso Region as a result of the forest fires in the area.
With the champions’ duel postponed, this Saturday the calendar will begin with four games: Coquimbo Unidos against Deportes Iquique, Palestino-Universidad Católica, Unión Española-Deportes Antofagasta and Audax Italiano-Universidad de Chile. While on Sunday Universidad de Concepción will play against Cobresal.
The regulations of the Chilean women’s First Division championship require that in this campaign 75 percent of the players must be hired by their clubs, which is one more step in the complete professionalization of the activity for which there are still missing quotas. achieve.
13 teams participate in the league, five of them belong to regions outside Santiago such as Everton, which returns to the top category, Deportes Antofagasta, Coquimbo Unidos, Deportes Iquique and Universidad de Concepción.
The format will be played in a first round of all against all, and a second divided into two groups. The top six in the table will define who gets to the semifinals and the remaining seven will fight to avoid the three places reserved for relegation.
In November, after the Copa Libertadores Femenina, the playoffs to define the champion in a single final.
