“Art women’s DFL” instead of DFB roof?
Women’s football revolution drives Rummenigge
09/22/2022, 7:31 p.m
Unlike the men’s Bundesliga, the women’s Bundesliga comes under the umbrella of the German Football Association. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge demands that this should change in favor of professionalisation. The suggestion of the ex-CEO of FC Bayern is not new – but receives new fire.
How can women’s football in Germany become more professional and relevant? Karl-Heinz Rummenigge has recently been increasingly concerned with this question. After the hype at the European Football Championship in England, the former long-time CEO of FC Bayern hopes that development will also progress in Germany.
He is now again bringing up the idea of spinning off the women’s Bundesliga from the German Football Association. “Just as happened in men’s football, the women’s Bundesliga should also consider whether it might not set up a kind of women’s DFL. Men’s football has developed sustainably in terms of quality when it broke away from the DFB in the direction of independence,” said Rummenigge the “Münchner Merkur” and the “tz”.
This suggestion is not new, he himself had already made it in April 2021. At that time he had spoken of women’s football as a “stepchild”. “And it’s high time to take care of it as it deserves. We have to develop women’s football more sustainably than has been possible at the DFB in recent years,” he said at the time.
Association had already submitted an application
The Football Association of the Rhineland (FVR) even submitted an application for a spin-off last year. An independent league should counteract the spectator interest, which has been weak for years, according to the application. “We want to throw the stone in the water,” said former DFB President Theo Zwanziger, who is an honorary president with voting rights on the FVR Presidium. The highest women’s league needs “a perspective outside of a large, shadowy area. That would be incredibly important socially and that’s only possible with a clear profile.”
But the application was off the table before the meeting of the DFB Bundestag. The clubs had agreed in January to instead strive for “sustainable professionalization for their leagues under the umbrella of the DFB”.
But Rummenigge again emphasized the advantages of a split: This would be “an approach so that women can become independent to a certain extent, after all, for well-known reasons, associations are always very slow and very difficult in decision-making. You should think about that.”
The former national player also receives support from Bayern President Herbert Hainer. “Men’s football has shown that the spin-off into an independent game operation makes sense and that you can achieve a lot with such decisions: the Bundesliga has become much more professional and attractive, so that can be an option,” he said in “Merkur” and “tz “.
Criticism of “macho sport”
According to Rummenigge, “you only need to take a look at the British Isles. What I have in mind is already being done there. A women’s league has been founded in which it is mandatory that the men’s teams from the Premier League, the who are responsible for the large income, also have a women’s team in which they have to invest and develop sustainably.”
He recently demanded the same from German clubs in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”: He would like it “if the Bundesliga invested more money in women’s football. The big clubs must be obliged to build a team, because only big names move. ” The success of the vice European champions “shouldn’t just have been a flare-up,” said Rummenigge. “It is a sine qua non that the macho sport of football is now also investing in women’s football.”
It was no coincidence, he emphasized, “that the European champions came from England this year. The same is now happening in Spain and Italy.” Life for German teams “doesn’t get any easier that way”.
The women’s Bundesliga began playing in 1990 – at that time in two seasons of ten teams each. Twelve teams now play in the first division and 14 teams in the second division. Many players still have to work outside of football to have enough money to live on. Professionalisation has therefore recently come back into focus. Players like Bayern captain Lina Magull are campaigning for a basic salary.