Women’s football
Setback: Bayern exit before Hrubesch’s Herculean task
Sarah Zadrazil from FC Bayern Munich sits disappointed on the pitch after the defeat. photo
© Sven Hoppe/dpa
There is a sense of alarm in women’s football: the quarter-finals of the premier class will take place without a German team. And in the Bundesliga, Eintracht boss Axel Hellmann is taking the DFB to task.
International knockout games without German footballers – the disaster at the 2023 World Cup in Australia is now being repeated Champions League.
“It’s brutal, it’s sad,” said coach Alexander Straus after FC Bayern Munich’s bitter defeat against Paris Saint-Germain. With tears in their eyes, Giulia Gwinn and Klara Bühl gave interviews after the final whistle.
The momentous 2-2 draw not only set the German champions back: for the first time since the Champions League replaced the UEFA Cup in 2009, no German team is in the quarter-finals. And there are rumblings in the Bundesliga.
Eintracht Frankfurt’s board spokesman Axel Hellmann criticized the development of women’s football in Germany and did not rule out the league breaking away from the German Football Association. “It will depend on the DFB whether this debate arises or not. There is grumbling, dissatisfaction, not only with me, but also with other professional clubs, and also how the clubs are integrated,” said the 52-year-old to the “Frankfurter Rundschau” .
High effort, hardly any return
Ultimately, it’s always a question of what’s best for women’s football. “If the necessary adjustments can be made to the structure of the DFB, I have no problem with that at all. But if that is not the case, we have to think about organizing women’s football independently,” Hellmann continued.
DFB sports director Nia Künzer showed understanding for Hellmann’s impatience. “We all agree on the goal. It would be nice if we worked together to ensure that clubs are at the forefront internationally and national teams are successful,” said the 44-year-old on Wednesday at the Spobis sports business conference in Hamburg. To achieve this, however, the framework conditions for women’s football would have to continue to improve.
DFB managing director Holger Blask slowed down in view of the rapid expansion of the Bundesliga demanded by Hellmann. “If we let 16 teams play today, the quality wouldn’t improve tomorrow,” said Blask. In addition, if there was an increase due to the current media partnerships, the league’s clubs would initially have a third less money available from TV marketing because the negotiated sums would have to be distributed among more clubs.
Hellmann had previously emphasized that, unlike the men’s game, the money from the Champions League was not suitable for increasing a budget: “The effort we put in consumes almost all of UEFA’s distribution. You earn money in women’s football from that Champions League no money.”
The Eintracht women had no chance of progressing before the last preliminary round matchday on Wednesday against FC Rosengard from Sweden. VfL Wolfsburg, which lost to FC Barcelona in the final in 2023, missed the group stage. 1. FFC Frankfurt was the last German team to win the Champions League in 2015.
Hrubesch looks Bayern out
For FC Bayern, the dream of a first international title was shattered in a dramatic final phase against Paris: an own goal by English runner-up Georgia Stanway in the 88th minute saw his team fall to third place in Group C behind Ajax Amsterdam and Paris. To make matters worse for the Munich team, who have been plagued by injuries in recent months, a goal from Jovana Damnjanovic in stoppage time was disallowed due to offside.
“The players deserved so much more,” said Straus, struggling to keep his composure at the press conference. “All four teams in this group would have progressed in another group.” National players such as Sydney Lohmann, Klara Bühl and Lea Schüller had already witnessed the DFB Women’s World Cup defeat last summer.
National coach Horst Hrubesch saw the Bayern campus as the next setback for women’s football in the country of the European Championship runners-up. The 72-year-old now has the Herculean task of leading the DFB team in the Nations League to the Olympic Games in Paris. A win in the semi-finals in Lyon against France on February 23rd would be enough.
In the event of a defeat, there would be a second chance five days later against the loser of the game between Spain and the Netherlands. A missed qualification would not only further deepen the crisis for the gold medalists from Rio 2016, but would also damage the league.