Alexis Nunes of ESPN: A woman covering sports has to work twice as hard as a man

Soccer reporter Alexis Nunes, with Salvadoran and Jamaican roots, and who recently signed a multi-year extension of her contract with ESPN, is based in London and is preparing to be in Doja for six weeks to cover her first World Cup. In addition, Nunes is already working for the second year in LaLiga for ESPN, which holds the broadcast rights to the tournament for the next eight years.

“It has been a dream come true. I was born in Jamaica, but my mother is Salvadorian and I am a fan of sports and soccer. In El Salvador, I have two uncles, José and Eduardo who are huge soccer fans. In addition, Eduardo is a referee too. I grew up talking with him and with my cousins about soccer and Real Madrid, a team of which all are fans. I am a fan of Manchester United,” she said.

She added that in London, the Premier League is heard more.

“Of course, that soccer culture exists in England, but it is felt more in Spain. There you really live soccer in a different way. Like in Brazil, for example. Those are the two countries that really have an amazing soccer culture. When you travel across Spain you learn that it is not a single country. There are like four countries in one, and I love it. Being an Afro-Latino woman, a Jamaican Caribbean woman, but with roots in El Salvador, I can understand that mix of cultures.”

For her one challenge that really stands out is being a woman working in sports. “Even now they still ask me, when I go in a taxi, what am I doing here, in Madrid or England, or wherever I go, and when I tell them I came for the soccer, they answer: ‘Oh, but do you really like soccer?’ Or ‘do you like Cristiano Ronaldo?’ and I tell them I’m a journalist and they say ‘Ah, really? And do you really know how the offside works?” She comments that sometimes on Twitter they tell her ‘Hey, go back to the kitchen, this is not for women’.

She feels like family at ESPN and she gets along very well with the boys. “And finding men who really want to support you and believe in you as a woman. They don’t mind that. They always tell me ‘You do deserve to be here.’ And that’s a nice thing, I think.”

Since the pandemic, she values teamwork more, “we are a great team.” She recalls that during the lockdown, working from home “I had to do everything alone: makeup, hair, the camera, and now I appreciate the daily team. Now I understand that there is no ‘I’ in a team. We are a team in front of and behind the scenes. This is ESPN’s secret. The contract with ESPN has been the easiest ‘yes’ I have ever given in my life.”