Cash prizes not coffee sets
The Germany women celebrate World Cup victory in China four years ago. Now, they are dreaming of winning the title at home.
Women’s football in Germany is recognized as a professional sport thanks to the national team’s success – By Ronny Galczynski
Germany women’s coach Silvia Neid still loves to recall the events of Nov. 10, 1982 – even though almost 30 years have passed. The former international player, who was capped for Germany 111 times, scored two goals in a 5:1 match against Switzerland in Koblenz – despite the fact that the attacking midfielder had only been brought on by head coach Gero Bisanz 30 minutes before the end of the match in her international debut game.
But the encounter with her Swiss opponents didn’t just mark the start of an extraordinary sporting career. The first official international match played by a German female football team also heralded the steep rise in popularity of women’s football in Germany – eleven-and-a-half years after France and The Netherlands played the first women’s international match to be recognized by FIFA.
Despite a DFB ban on women’s football from 1955 to 1970, German women had already been playing for a long time, with almost 150 unofficial and therefore illegal international matches played since 1956 by the West German team in front of crowds of up to 20,000. But it was this convincing performance by the DFB squad in Koblenz that had even the sport’s harshest critics biting their tongues.
Even Bisanz, a key figure in the establishment of the sport and at the time also a trainer for the men’s national B squad, who got involved in women’s football by sheer chance, had his own prejudiced views of the sport. “It took a few years before I was completely fulfilled by this work,” the qualified sports instructor later said frankly, after he’d sat on the national trainer’s bench 126 times.
German football fans also needed several years to get used to the idea of women’s football. The squad’s surprise win at the 1989 European championships on home turf had a considerable impact on the sport’s recognition, when Bisanz’s DFB team secured the trophy in a legendary semi-final and final against Italy and Norway. They did it with the help of co-trainer Tina Theune-Meyer, who eventually took over the role of chief coach in 1996 and went on to become the most successful women’s football coach in the world.
The game was also the first time that women’s football had been broadcast live on German television. Football-playing ladies hadn’t enjoyed such national television coverage since 1974, when Bärbel Wohlleben shot the first ARD “goal of the month.”
But in 1989, what responsible functionaries really thought of German national women’s football was made abundantly clear by the fusty DFB, which awarded each player a second-rate coffee service as a prize for winning the European championship title. Doris Fitschen, a member of the winning team and today manager of the national women’s squad, recalls the gift with a grin. “The World Cup winners who received €50,000 for the title in 2007 spent the money long ago but I’ve still got my coffee set…” Perhaps the €60,000 prize money for each player negotiated for this summer’s World Cup will last longer.
At the first World Cup in China in 1991, the German team competed as newly-crowned European champions, but were beaten in the semi-finals by the US squad, which went on to win the tournament. Four years later in Sweden, the German team finished as runner-up, finally establishing the squad in the big league. Winning the European crown again in 1995 meant that Germany’s ladies had already played themselves into the ranks of the world’s best. Since then, the squad has successfully fought off challenges to the title four times in a row – the last time in Finland in 2009.
When the team clinched the world title in 2003 in the US under the tutelage of Theune-Meyer, names such as Birgit Prinz, Silke Rottenberg, Nia Künzer & co. finally lodged themselves in the heads of German football fans, who up to then had only been aware of male players like Klinsmann, Völler and Ballack. It was the decisive “golden goal” header by Künzer during extra-time in the final against Sweden that really triggered enthusiasm and sustained attention back at home in Germany. The goal was later voted “goal of the year” by viewers of the sportscast Sportschau.
In 2007 – by this time assistant Silvia Neid had been promoted to the role of head coach for the star ensemble – the German national squad succeeded in confidently defending the world title it had won four years before. In the final match, the women defeated the elegant Brazilian team led by superstar Marta by two goals to nil. The women’s national team clocked up success after success, providing regular boosts to a sport that, over the last two decades, has grown more popular among females.
“Football is our life,” the Germany men sang back in 1974. Their words are echoed today by more than a million girls and women who officially play under the DFB umbrella. Women’s football in Germany has evolved from its long-derided niche existence into a well-respected competitive sport in which the best athletes have been able to earn a living for some time now.
When the first Women’s World Cup on German soil begins on June 26, the German national team will have played a total of 346 international matches. If that total climbs to 352 by 17 June, they will at least have reached the final in Frankfurt. With a bit of luck, they may even attain a goal that the men’s squad can only dream of: and clinch the world title for the third year running.
– Ronny Galczynski is a freelance journalist and author living in Hamburg. Recently published books include “Frauenfussball von A-Z” (An A to Z of Women’s Football).