Women’s Football Boom Happening in Germany

Overtime Heroics Editorial

1045 days ago

Having won no less than eight EURO titles, as well as two World Cup trophies and one Olympic gold medal, the German women’s national team, has a formidable history of success. But culturally speaking, women and girls playing football in that country have always had a steep hill to climb toward acceptance, let alone respect. Equal pay seems like a utopian dream there. All of this, however, is slowly but noticeably beginning to change.

EURO Success as a Springboard?

The strong showing of the German national team in the 2022 UEFA Women’s EURO, that only ended in a narrow extra-time defeat at the Wembley final captured the country’s imagination like seemingly never before. Each of the team’s matches in the tournament seemed to have shattered all previous records of TV ratings for women’s football matches in the country.

A few months on, it is still difficult to quantify exactly how much of an impact this mania will have on female football in Germany, especially long term. But there is plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting that there has been a sudden boom of girls signing up to play for their local teams and of a spike in their interest in football in general.

Positive Change at Club Level

Other indicators of change have to do with the FLYERALARM Women’s Bundesliga. Several top clubs with parallel top-flight men’s teams have decided to let their women’s sides play some key matches at their large men’s teams’ stadiums. This has had a great impact on the league’s attendance figures. That was especially the case for VfL Wolfsburg, the undisputed giant of German women’s club football in the last decade. This past Sunday, they took on Bayern Munich (the side that won the only three league titles that didn’t go to Wolfsburg in that period). Between them, these two clubs have the majority of the national team squad of this year’s EURO on their books, including nearly all of the regular starters. While some of them were unavailable to play in Sunday’s game due to injury, the match still turned out to be quite a spectacle, in which the home side came out 2-1 winners.

Wolfsburg’s Polish star striker Ewa Pajor gave them the 1-0 halftime lead. Early in the second half, Svenja Huth doubled the home team’s advantage. Later, Klara Bühl gave Bayern some hope, by making it 2-1. What followed was a strong Bavarian push for the equalizer, which never came, despite several good opportunities.

Even though they fell short of taking a point away from Wolfsburg, the team from Munich can take solace from the fact that there was very little difference in quality between the teams. Luck was arguably the decisive factor. That was not always the case in matches between the two previous years.
In other good news for the league, it signed a domestic TV deal for the coming three seasons, worth over €5 million annually, which is around 16 times the amount in the current contract that runs out in the summer of 2023. This proves that women’s football in Germany is on the rise, the question is how long will it remain so and what can be gained from that rise in the long term? In the short term at least, there is a Women’s World Cup next summer in Australia and New Zealand, in which the German public will expect their team to do well. If they don’t, there is always the danger of losing the relevance they’ve just gained.

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