I'm a professional soccer player. It's a privilege, I'm absolutely aware of it.
I've loved this sport for as long as I can remember and am grateful that I was able to turn soccer, my passion, into a career. I now also see this privilege as an obligation. For working — for young female players, for my colleagues and for the importance of women's soccer as a whole. Because in Germany, this does not have nearly the status it deserves.
To make one thing clear in advance:
This is not about compassion, nor is it about an envy debate with regard to men's soccer. It is simply a matter of naming grievances, explaining positive examples — and formulating constructive suggestions based on them. The aim must be to stimulate at least a discussion about the importance and recognition of women's soccer in Germany.
This is also so important to me because I have been able to experience first-hand how the quality of women's soccer has improved since childhood. Yes, it is not as athletic as men's soccer, it is less dynamic. In the end, he is different, but he has his own qualities — and maybe we should just stop comparing the women and the men on the pitch.
The fact that women's soccer in Germany has developed so positively is also due to the fact that clubs are working more and more professionally — hard work that many overlook.
We women train just as intensively as men — and sometimes make higher sacrifices. To some, this statement may seem provocative and out of touch with reality, but I want to explain it: We train once or twice a day at FC Bayern. In addition, for most of us, there is the additional burden of working or studying in addition to soccer.
We also refrain from parties, control our eating habits, strive for the big picture, and are disciplined. We subordinate everything to soccer — including our family planning.
The fact that female professional athletes cannot afford to have children in the middle of their careers is often wiped away. If a 25-year-old professional has three children, which is wonderful, that is no problem for his career.
In addition, many of us leave our families early on because there is no ambitious women's team in the area — and even later do not have the (financial) means to bring the family members to our place of residence or at least have them flown in more often. And again: We are happy to do that. We're not victims. We're thankful that we're on the pitch.
Before Corona, there was an average women's Bundesliga game in the 2018/19 season. Abroad — let's look at the (women) soccer nations England (+78 percent), France (+ 27 percent) and the USA (+149 percent) — the number of spectators has risen rapidly, for example.
The frightening thing: In Germany, they have fallen. Experts in women's soccer will agree that the quality has reached a much higher level in recent years. German women's soccer has become more athletic, technically and tactically demanding. So why are the viewers staying out? What are other leagues doing better?
This fact is certainly also due to the fact that there are too few identification figures today that young female soccer players can look up to. Which passer-by can name the three national soccer players from the stand-up? We need names like Birgit Prinz again — identification figures who have a certain presence and reputation. To do this, we must do more: with the associations themselves, in marketing and in media presence.
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One reason for the limited appeal of women's soccer is certainly the lack of integration with men's soccer. Teams such as FC Barcelona manage to let the men's celebrity shine on to the women. There are joint team photos, media appointments, events and the general effort to let women's teams participate in the men's success.
A simple, constructive and easy-to-implement suggestion: In England, it is common practice that players from the men's and women's teams are present at autograph sessions. That would be a start. In the same way, women could be integrated again and again into the respective marketing channels of the associations — whether it's social media, their own video channel or a press conference. There is therefore still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to integrating the world of men and women.
However, the fact that most of the well-known Bundesliga clubs criminally neglect or push aside women's soccer is much more critical. A look at the Flyeralarm-Frauen-Bundesliga: The percentage of teams represented in the league with a high-class and well-known men's division is 58 percent. In England, this share is 100 percent, in France and Spain 75.
Major German soccer clubs such as Borussia Dortmund and VfB Stuttgart with hundreds of thousands, including many female fans, still do not have their own women's division. At the same time, grassroots women's teams are also structurally disadvantaged and subordinated. Current example: 1. FC Mönchengladbach.
Here, the club board recently decided not to register the teams of the 1st and 2nd women and the U17 junior teams for the 2020/2021 season. Reason: The first men's team was promoted to the major league.
The players concerned found out shortly before the reporting first — if you believe those affected (which I do), there was no prior agreement. This may be an extreme example, but it is symbolic of how women's soccer is handled in many German clubs.
We also need more presence in the media — on TV, in newspapers, magazines and online portals, on social media. We have tens of thousands of young players who are looking for role models and want to look up to professional players.
I don't want to weaken men's soccer at all — I follow the Bundesliga intensively and am a big fan of my male colleagues. But it is this over-presence that bothers me. An over-presence that not only women's soccer suffers from. Other sports are also neglected.
Sometimes I have to wonder what trifles are cooked up in the media while other sports disappear completely under the radar. When a hassle on the training ground takes up more media space than the women's cup final, it irritates me.
I am thinking in particular of public service broadcasting. He has the responsibility and the opportunity to weight topics differently from media that only rely on short-term click rates. Why is there no sign of it?
I closely follow every men's Bundesliga game day. But why do the daily topics have to report in detail about the games in the first division right after the sports show — while women's soccer, but also other sports, are completely lost.
Counterexample: The BBC will soon release the second season of a documentary about the West Ham United women's team. And there are also numerous other platforms for women's soccer in the UK, such as the FA Player app, where all women's matches are streamed live and commented on, while the topic is barely tangible in Germany. So sometimes a little more diversity would do us a lot of good.
In addition, we also need new approaches in marketing. I'm not naive: professional soccer involves a lot of money. This must be generated. The point is: We soccer players too can be role models — or in monetary terms: We too can conquer markets.
I would like to deliberately give a positive example: Adidas not only took photos of current FC Bayern Munich professionals during their last promotional campaign, but also photographed a few of our players. These are great approaches. That's how we get attention and that's how we can build female role models.
And yes, of course we would also like to earn enough money to be able to financially secure ourselves through soccer alone, but in fact we are primarily concerned with strengthening women's soccer.
We stand for passion, joy and enthusiasm.
And we'd love to share that. And, as an additional note: We are usually in the mood for marketing activities and do not see them as a necessary evil, like many of our male colleagues.
I love soccer. He is my life. I am happy that I have the opportunity to be on the pitch every day. Because it's not primarily about money. Football is so much more. We soccer crazy people all know that.
That's why I decided to become a brand ambassador at B42, by the way. I don't get any transfers for my posts, nor is it about self-marketing. It's about making soccer better together — at all levels. So let's have the discussion: How can we sustainably improve women's soccer? I'm looking forward to it!
Your Lina Magull
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