The 2001 Campeonato Paulista de Futebol Feminino was the sixth edition of the São Paulo state championship for women's football, and the first to be organized directly by the Federação Paulista de Futebol (FPF). This edition was organized in conjunction with Pelé Sports & Marketing. Played between October and December 2001, the competition had twelve participant clubs made up of under-23 players, who were selected partly on the basis of their beauty. Palmeiras was the champion after beating Matonense in the final.
Competition
Background
In the aftermath of the Brazil women's national football team's failure to secure a medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, several leading players moved from domestic Brazilian clubs to the new Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA) in the United States. An attendant collapse in sponsorship and funding led to clubs including São Paulo FC closing their professional women's sections. The women's football scene in Brazil remained conspicuously underdeveloped: lacking visibility, resources and proper structure.
The previous four editions of the Campeonato Paulista de Futebol Feminino had been run by a private company, Sport Promotion. Relatively high player wages and unbalanced competition caused by all the top players clustering at small number of clubs contributed to the discontinuation of that arrangement in 2000. The Federação Paulista de Futebol (FPF) partnered with Pelé Sports & Marketing to run the 2001 competition, although the latter was closed by Pelé during the season due to an unrelated scandal.
Player selection
The revamped 2001 edition of the Campeonato Paulista became notorious as "one of the most discriminatory sports championships ever" and "the most sexist championship ever". The FPF arranged for 1,620 players aged between 16 and 23 years old to attend a two-day trial at Estádio Ícaro de Castro Melo, from which 280 successful players would be assigned to the 12 teams.
An FPF 'technical commission', including retired ex-professionals Basílio, Wladimir and Clodoaldo, selected players on criteria which included their perceived physical attractiveness. Although organizers insisted that was not necessarily the only, or the overriding, factor which was considered. FPF Vice President Renato Duprat offered his reassurance: "If we have to choose an ugly girl who plays well or a pretty girl who plays so-so, we'll choose the ugly one. You can be sure."
To ensure competitive balance, the three clubs who still had adult women's football departments were only allowed to use players from their 'base categories' (youth teams), while all teams were only allowed one national team player each. The three clubs (Matonense, Guarani and Portuguesa) had wanted to keep their existing rosters instead of using the young players assigned to them from the FPF trials.
Players older than 23 years old, with short hair, and/or with dark skin were excluded, even national team players. This meant that some experienced professional players who had not moved to the United States and were now excluded at home were forced out of football altogether. Some were consigned to poverty, including Solange "Soró" Bastos who took a job as a cleaner.
Official promotional materials for the competition prominently featured actress Patrícia de Sabrit on the cover, alongside the slogan: "novo futebol feminino" (). Other exclusively young, white, long-haired girls appeared alongside Sabrit in the literature. One was shown embracing a man, apparently to emphasise her heterosexuality.
Some participants openly criticized the selection policy: organizers' poster girl Talita Cassiano, a 20-year-old student selected on the basis of a 20-minute trial appearance where she hardly touched the ball, called the process "preconceituoso" (). Other players, coaches and administrators within women's football were more supportive as they felt public perceptions of women's football in Brazil had been negatively affected by a prevalence of unattractive lesbians.
Ten years later Juliana Cabral recalled that players had been given tight, revealing kit to wear, which was both "indecentes" and impractical in that it inhibited the players' movement.
A September 2001 Placar magazine article described the tournament as "estranho" (), outlining an outside perception that a "Ninfetão" () had been created to ward off women's football's enduring image as an "esporte de sapatão" ().