Pro soccer player ‘RUN’ because pregnant: Italian goalkeeper, 34, says ‘I feel hurt as a woman, mother and athlete’ and like ‘an old throwaway toy’

An Italian professional soccer player says she was fired from her club because she became pregnant.

Alice Pignagnoli, 34, who was the goalkeeper for Italy’s third division team Lucchese of Tuscany, said she was fired by her club because she had a child on the way.

“I am pregnant and my team no longer pays my wages,” Pignagnoli told Italian newspaper Il Resto del Carlino.

During her sixteen-year career, Pignagnoli played for AC Milan, Torres, Mantua and Reggiana.

Alice Pignagnoli, 34, who was the goalkeeper for Italy’s third division team Lucchese of Tuscany, said she was fired by her club because she had a child on the way. She is training in 2021 in the photo

Pignagnoli said: “I felt hurt as a woman, as a mother and as an athlete. And also very alone, unable.” She is pictured in a post on her Instagram page in July 2022

In 2011, she won the Italian Super Cup with Torres, a club based in Sassari, Sardinia, before entering the competition later that season.

Pignagnoli said: “In the middle of October I found out I was pregnant for the second time. I told Lucchese’s manager Mario Santoro and was told that an agreement made last summer must be honored and they no longer intend to pay me what I owe.

The zookeeper posted a message on her Instagram page and wrote it as a letter to her unborn child.

In the long post, Pignagnoli said: “I felt hurt as a woman, as a mother and as an athlete. And also very alone, incapable.”

During her sixteen-year career, Pignagnoli played for AC Milan, Torres, Mantua and Reggiana. Pignagnoli was pictured in her goalkeeper kit for Censa in 2019

Pignagnoli said she felt like an “old toy that had to be thrown away”. In the photo she is preparing for training in 2021

In her Instagram post, Pignagnoli said: “I dream of a world of love where women are assisted in one of the biggest and most difficult tasks they face

She said she felt like an old toy that needed to be thrown away.

When she was seven months pregnant with her first child, her then club Cesena extended her contract.

“After what happened to Cesena two years ago, I never expected this to happen,” she said.

In her Instagram post, Pignagnoli added: “I dream of a world of love where women can be supported in one of the biggest and most difficult tasks they face: not only to create life, but not to ‘ to be ‘wrong’ about it.” .” their decisions.

“A world where women are valued for their worth and not for the number of children they have or haven’t had.”