Woman and soccer fan: why is that exotic?

Olé, Olé!
I am a woman and a soccer fan! Do you have a problem with it!?

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Apparently, even in 2021, it will not be taken for granted that women will be interested in football. Editor Anna can’t believe it.

“Hello I’m Anna”

“Hi Anna, what are you doing?”

“I play the guitar … and I like to watch football.”

“Football – really ??? Are you really a fan? “

“Yes, Dortmund …”

“So you watch the games properly and all that?”

“Yes why?”

“No, just like that.”

“I also played soccer once.”

“Really!”

“But.”

“Is it true that everyone is lesbian?”

Whew – I’ve had dozens of conversations like this or something like that. A woman who is really interested in football (not only for the European Championship or World Cup) seems to be exotic even in 2021. I ask myself: why? At a time when more than a million women play soccer themselves, it would be downright weird if at least half of them weren’t interested in professional sport, right?

Watching football with your friend? No, why?

Believe me or not: There are more women in the stadium than the scantily clad women in national flag bikini tops, which the television shows in close-up at almost every European Championship or World Cup. Take me for example. I’m not in a bikini in the stadium, I haven’t painted my cheeks with fan paint and I don’t play vuvuzela either – but I don’t miss a game of my favorite team, even outside the World Cup. I’m a BVB fan through and through, have installed the kicker app and always know the current Bundesliga table.

Do I watch with my boyfriend? Nope! Meanwhile, he’s doing something else. Reading, cooking, laundry … And if I wanted him to bring me beer and sandwiches, then he would surely do that too. “It’s the wrong world at home.”Many say – and admittedly, it sometimes flits over my lips. All the worse, because there shouldn’t be a right or wrong world when it comes to which gender watches football and which cake bakes, right?

I still remember a party that I attended with my ex-boyfriend and his colleagues. There was a goal wall – and I: Go there, ball on your foot, zack in that thing! When my ex’s colleagues saw that I had met, they made fun of him out loud: “Hey, there is no such thing – your girlfriend can play football better than you!” Um, yes, wow, how unusual. A woman who has been playing in a football club for 10 years hits the goal wall more often than a man who only kicks a little on the beach. Logic? Nothing!

Shouldn’t female soccer players be sexy?

Speaking of illogical. When I was out and about at a ball in evening dresses with my soccer girls, a guy asked us: Where are you from? What are you doing? When we said we were a soccer team, he checked us from top to bottom and said: “Um, I don’t think so …”. Obviously we were too sexy for female soccer players. Here, too, one asks oneself: what has one to do with the other? Are women playing soccer not allowed to wear clothes? Have or show no curves? If the cliché is up, obviously not.

What is a women’s sport in the USA, by the way, is probably not yet fully accepted as unisex in Germany. It’s a shame, because I really don’t feel like having the same arduous discussion about my supposedly exotic hobby next week. Oh and to answer the question: No, not all girls in a women’s soccer team are lesbian. And even if so, what role does that play?

Brigitte