Botineras
Clockwise from top left: Laura Posse / Mia (Romina Gaetani), Cristian "Chiqui" Flores (Nicolás Cabré), Nino Paredes (Gonzalo Valenzuela), Marga Molinari (Isabel Macedo), Giselle López (Florencia Peña), Tato Marín (Damián de Santo)
Genre	Police procedural
Created by	Sebastian Ortega
Developed by	Underground Producciones
Written by	Esther Feldman, Alejandro Maci
Starring	Florencia Peña Nicolás Cabré Romina Gaetani Isabel Macedo Gonzalo Valenzuela Damián De Santo
Opening theme	Las Botineras by David Bolzoni
Composer(s)	Facundo Espinosa Fernando Monteleone
Country of origin	Argentina
Original language(s)	Spanish
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	142
Broadcast
Original channel	Telefé
Original run	November 24, 2009 (2009-11-24) – August 25, 2010 (2010-08-25)
External links
Website
Production website

Botineras (WAGs: Love for the game) is an Argentine telenovela produced by Endemol and Underground. Airing on Telefe, it was premiered on November 24, 2009, and was broadcast until August 25, 2010. It works around football players, their mediatic romances and police investigations. In the beginning the telenovela had a comedy approach, but later shifted to give more prominence to the policial genre. The main actors at the beginning were Florencia Peña and Nicolás Cabré, Peña decided to resign some time after the genre shift as her character lost importance for the plot, whereas the ones played by Romina Gaetani and Isabel Macedo gained notability.

Premise [edit]

Initially, the telenovela was intended to be a comedy about football. In Spanish, a botinera is literally a woman that wears a botín, a term that can denote both some High-heeled footwear or a Football boot; in everyday usage it is also a new term to denote a footballer's girlfriend or wife. The policial investigation of Laura Posse was used at first simply as a narrative tool to introduce the watcher into the context. The comedy also featured some celebrities from the Argentine football, like football agent Guillermo Cóppola, acting as themselves. One of the main assets of the comedy was the actress Florencia Peña, who worked in many other successful comedies.

By January 2010 the telenovela made a genre shift, leaving the humoristic tone and giving instead a higher development to the policial genre, with higher roles for the Laura Posse and Arregui characters. The first story arc with the changed genre had the main character Cristian Flores being jailed for some weeks. The new genre had higher ratings than the comedy.^[1] The character of Florencia Peña was reformulated in the process, by going into bankrut and forced to work for the police as well. By February Florencia Peña announced that she would leave the program because of the changes; with actor Pablo Rago joining the program instead.^[1] Rago would depart from the program as well near its end, in order to play the lead role in the film Manuel Belgrano.

Plot [edit]

The name of the comedy comes from an organization within the plot, where the botineras are women that use an agency to develop mediatic romances with football players. Such agency is managed by Giselle López (Florencia Peña). The plot starts with the arrival to Buenos Aires of the football player Cristian Flores (Nicolás Cabré), who is bent on getting married with his girlfrend, Marga Molinari (Isabel Macedo). Flores was suspected of murdering Cappa, a rival player in Europe, and the police starts to investigate him. Laura Posse (Romina Gaetani) tries to investigate him by becoming a botinera and being near him. For this purpose she takes a secret identity as Mía Alberdi. Flores was living with his agent, Tato Marín, so Mía managed to work as secretary for Tato. Tato had killed Alberto Flores (Cristian's father) in order to have control over him by acting as a parental figure. This was unknown by Flores, but not by Nino Paredes, Tato's lawyer. Paredes kept evidence of the crime to threaten him.

Reception [edit]

On the day of the premiere the rival channel 13 scheduled a sketch with Francella, Adrian Suar and Tinelli, but "Botineras" had a higher rating, 27,3 against 22,3.^[2]

Cast [edit]

Cast (in credits order)

• Florencia Peña ... Giselle López
• Nicolás Cabré ... Cristian "Chiqui" Flores
• Romina Gaetani ... Laura Posse aka Mía Alberdi
• Damián de Santo ... Eduardo "Tato" Marín
• Gonzalo Valenzuela ... Nino Paredes
• Tomás Fonzi ... Adrián "Anguila" Muñiz
• Lola Berthet ... Catalina Bellagamba
• Christian Sancho ... Manuel "Flaco" Riveiro
• Luciano Cáceres ... Mono
• Lucas Ferraro ... Fernando Rodríguez
• Ezequiel Castaño ... Gonzalo "Lalo" Roldán
• Guillermina Valdez ... Liliana "Lili" Aramburu
• Alan Sabbagh ... Omar Torres
• Silvia Pérez ... Éthel Molinari
• Graciela Pal ... Mirta Rubinstein
• Roberto Carnaghi ... Humberto Arregui
• Isabel Macedo ... Margarita "Marga" Molinari

rest of cast listed alphabetically

• Mario Alarcón ... Merlotti
• Matías Apostolo ... Vargas
• Mónica Ayos ... Celeste
• Leonora Balcarce ... Mercedes Moro
• Lola Banfi ... Analía Baldomero
• Emilio Bardi ... Felipe
• Max Berliner ... "GG"
• Ariel Bertone ... Pérez
• Luciano Cazaux ... D.T. Almada
• Agustina Córdova ... "Candy"
• Rita Cortese ... Emma Riganti
• Alejandro Cupito ... Máximo
• Diego Echegoyen ... Cárdenas
• Emme ... Solange Cuchi
• Maximiliano Ghione ... Marcos Ibarra
• Iván González ... Alfio Ochoa
• Rodrigo Guirao Díaz ... Walter Vazquez
• Juan Ignacio Machado ... Rafael "Mostaza" Gómez
• Alicia Muxo ... Emilia Roldán
• Adrián Navarro ... Andrés Cappa
• Laura Novoa ... Sofía Rubinstein
• Victoria Onetto ... Giselle Martino
• Alejo Ortiz ... Román Lamas
• Susana Ortiz ... Hilda Gómez
• Pablo Rago ... Javier Salgado
• Diego Reinhold ... Paul
• Santiago Ríos ... "Gurka"
• Dolores Sarmiento ... Malena Salgado
• Jenny Williams ... Vanina Pandolfi
• Luis Ziembrowski ... Roca

References [edit]

External links [edit]

• Official site