Documentary Women's Football | Women's European Football Championship: To hell with decency

Giulia Gwinn does say one interesting sentence in the otherwise rather bland women's soccer documentary "Shooting Stars – Germany's New Football Generation," which has been available in the ARD media library since June 28. Right at the end, after chatting about her two cruciate ligament tears and her book launch, she and a teammate from FC Bayern Munich poured latte macchiatos from a portafilter machine in a Munich café for the Athmo pictures, she then says: "I do that too (referring to her book, including press events) because I didn't have any female role models back then." And that's probably true. Anyone interested in the sport as a woman or girl before the huge women's soccer boom at the 2022 European Championships had at most heard of Marta (Brazilian striker), Hope Solo (US goalkeeper and scandal queen), or maybe Megan Rapinoe (US top soccer player), but then you really had to have had a pretty nerdy, specialized interest in the niche sport of women's soccer. Women weren't role models because they were simply barely noticed, and if they were, they weren't idols because the glamour factor was missing. Women who played soccer weren't cool, even for women who played soccer. As sad as it sounds, role models for girls like Giulia Gwinn, who played soccer in the 1990s or early 2000s, were the old men from "Sportschau," "Bravo Sport," or "Sport Bild."

Things have changed now. The German national team, who will play their first match at the European Championships against Poland next Friday, have between 400,000 (Lena Oberdorf) and 644,000 (Giulia Gwinn) Instagram followers, advertising contracts, and, if things go really well for them, even a book publisher. While the majority of players in the Women's Bundesliga still earn between €2,000 and €4,000 a month, which is a joke compared to their male counterparts, at least—and this is almost certain—none of them will receive a coffee set to celebrate winning the European Championship.

Training started at 9 p.m. At least you could still finish the housework.

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And yet there are women who could have served as role models. Their names are Birgit Bormann, Petra Landers, and Anne Trabant-Haarbach. They're all now over 60, and during their playing days, they had to make their own jerseys, sometimes from wool sweaters, because their club had absolutely no money left for the "women's" fun section.

The documentary "Girls Can't Play Football" by the highly experienced documentary filmmaker Torsten Körner ("Black Eagles," 2021, "The Unyielding," 2024) describes the more than rocky path of these pioneers of German women's football, from illegal training (the DFB banned women's football in 1955 out of fear of bouncing breasts, arguing that "displaying the body violates decency and propriety") to winning the 1989 European Championship. The contrast to the "Shooting Stars" documentary, which was clearly filmed as a promotional video for the ongoing European Championship in Switzerland, could not be more stark.

What Bormann, Landers, and several others recount sounds like grandma's tales from the war. In their time, there wasn't even a proper league system for a long time, because there wasn't even a team bus to take the women from Wattenscheid to Bergisch Gladbach. Instead, they stood at the regional train station and waited for the train, which was sometimes canceled or arrived much too late. Training times for women were released after the last boys' youth team had finished on Tuesday evening, meaning training started at 9 p.m. At least they could still finish housework.

And similar to the documentary "The Miracle of Taipei" (2019), the women tell of brutal sexism ("Hot Dance in Hot Panties" was the headline for the DFB women's first official international match against Switzerland in 1982) and their unwavering will to play football against all opposition. It's clear how liberating football was for the women. The DFB had banned them from playing the game for one reason only: to prevent the laundry from being left undone at home and the children from starving.

A career like Giulia Gwinn's would not have been possible back then. Even after her second serious injury, she bounced back and is now captain of the national team. And that's because women's football has become extremely professionalized. Dedicated physiotherapists, rehabilitation programs, and rehabilitation training – Landers and Trabant-Haarbach couldn't even dream of such things back then. A cruciate ligament tear was often synonymous with the end of a career.

With "Girls Can't Play Football," Torsten Körner has once again done some extremely diligent work in the archives, showing scenes from former "Sportschau" broadcasts that would be immediately scandalous today. Back then, however, it was normal for filming to take place in the women's locker rooms (not in the men's locker rooms, of course). In the interview segments among the spectators at a women's game (it was all men), one of them reveals what can only be seen on the other's face: "I'm actually just here to have a little laugh."

Those days are over, as evidenced by image films like the "Shooting Stars" documentary, in which the players are no longer concerned with fighting for recognition. As a viewer, one is more likely to fear how women's football can best protect itself from being sold off.

"Girls Can't Play Football": Germany 2025. Directed by Torsten Körner. 90 minutes. Airs on July 4, 11:15 p.m. on ARD and available in the ARD Media Library from July 3. "Shooting Stars – Germany's New Football Generation" is available in the ARD Media Library.