No summer fairy tale - On the situation of girls' football

We are all looking forward to the European Championship, which starts today! It's great that there is so much talk about women's and girls' football - but it's a shame that it's never about the breadth and the young players and the conditions under which they have to work in Austria. No pitches, no dedicated girls' leagues, sexism on the pitch from as early as U7, a lack of (good! respectful!) clubs for girls, no funding .... The fact that almost no club in Austria that plays in the women's national league fields even a single junior girls' team should not really be the case. The fact that a club regularly plays in the Women's Champions League without having trained a single one of its players itself should not really be possible! Work with young players, and thus also work in the sense of popular sports and the general promotion of a sports culture, should be a condition, just as it is with the men. In the women's field, there are about twice as many adult teams as junior teams - the opposite would actually be logical. In the whole of Vienna, there are a total of only six clubs that field junior girls' teams in individual age groups:

FC Altera Porta, First Vienna FC and ASK Erlaa TORPEDO 03 (formerly FC Torpedo 03) are at the top with four junior teams; USC Landhaus provides 3 teams; ASV 13 two and Austria one. There are also girls who play with the boys - but always only very few per year, far too few to later feed a women's national league.

While people like to talk about the lack of women's teams at Rapid & Co, there is no interest in the existing - very few - women's and girls' teams. The travails of the level, but which are the basis for the top, the daily struggles for space - soccer fields, training times, home game times, dressing rooms and any corners to store training stuff -, infrastructure, support from the city, municipality and associations. Especially in Vienna, the talk about the importance of girls' sports is a mockery if you are active in a sports club yourself, and there is no concession when it comes to sports fields of the city or the umbrella organizations - in football as well as in ice hockey.

The fact that great achievements and major events like the Euro, which starts today, also have sustainable effects is up to the football associations and municipalities - that they strengthen girls' and women's football through infrastructure and budget. Not in the form of nice projects, but through systematic support of girls' and women's football associations.

And through clear guidelines such as:

• at least 20% of the pitch time must go to girls and women (either football clubs establish their own girls' teams, or must make the time available to other girls' and women's clubs)
• each women's Bundesliga club must have at least four girls' junior teams
• new sports fields go primarily to girls' clubs or those that provide a relevant number of girls' teams
• 50% of the sponsoring money from state and city-affiliated companies (cue Wien Holding) goes to girls' and women's sports
• No more tax money for training centers, stadiums, sports fields, etc. where space and infrastructure for girls' teams is not considered.

Then we are at the next European Championship maybe finally not only in the top, but also in the width and have a women's national league, where not only 1-2 clubs can play at the top, but 12. That would be something!