EURO 2025: Why women's teams from Eastern Europe have a hard time

"This is more than a tournament. It's a movement. And the response from across Europe and beyond proves that women's football not only exists, but is setting a new standard," says Nadine Kessler, former German international and UEFA's executive director responsible for women's football.

Much of this is undisputed: According to UEFA, more tickets were sold before the start of the EURO 2025 group stage than during the entire EURO 2022 , social media engagement around women's football has increased by 55 percent since then, and prize money has increased by 156 percent to €41 million.

These are impressive figures. However, they should not obscure the fact that the development of women's football is far from being so positive in all regions of Europe.

Croatia is internationally successful in men's football. And the women?

Poland is the only Eastern European team to qualify for this year's European Championship. And in the 41 years since women's football's European Championships began, only two other Eastern European teams have participated in this tournament: Ukraine at Euro 2009 and Russia five times between 1997 and their ban from international football in 2022.

This stands in stark contrast to men's football, where eleven of the 24 teams at the next European Championship in Germany in 2024 came from Eastern Europe – even if they failed to achieve major success there. Croatia proved that things can be different, losing only in the final of the 2018 World Cup and then celebrating third place in Qatar four years later. And the Croatian women's football team? They have never qualified for a European Championship.

Goran Ljubojevic, former coach and current sporting director of Croatia's women's national champions ZNK Osijek, told DW that the region has always lagged behind, as clubs only began introducing women's programs in the 1990s. There is also little investment in women's soccer. Furthermore, Ljubojevic says, social norms are holding the sport back: "The cultural problem in our countries is that people think girls shouldn't play soccer, that they should stay at home and be housewives."

Are outdated role models responsible?

The European Union Gender Equality Index, published in 2024, confirms his assessment to some extent. No Eastern European country performs above the EU average.

"I don't know if the male brain in Croatia will ever change and if this part of Europe will ever accept women's football at the same level as it does in Western Europe or the USA," Ljubojevic says thoughtfully.

The Osijek sports director believes that the visibility of women's football is important. After all, it's clear in his home country, as well as in the east and south of the continent, that there's great interest in the Women's European Championship and that stadiums are sold out.

"People watched the European Championship matches, the World Cup in Australia [and New Zealand 2023 - ed.]. They saw the packed stadiums and thought, 'Wow, I didn't know so many people watched women's football.' So something is changing in their minds. But even then, I think the infrastructure is still not good enough for women's football to thrive here."

Great potential in women's football in Eastern Europe

Although ZNK Osijek is the most successful women's team in the country, only an average of around 300 spectators attend their games. This is still more than almost any other team in Eastern Europe. Ljubojevic believes there is sufficient talent. However, money would need to be invested in training, infrastructure, and the players' salaries to enable them to become full-time professionals.

UEFA has launched support programs for women's football in Eastern Europe in recent years. According to Professor Dariusz Wojtaszyn of the University of Wrocław in Poland, they are slowly showing results. "There have been many positive developments in recent years," the historian and political scientist, who has studied women's football in Eastern Europe extensively, told DW. "Budgets for women's football have increased significantly in all Central and Eastern European countries, usually by more than 100 percent. That's why I view UEFA's initiatives very positively. They are producing truly tangible results."

Influence of politics and history on women's football

According to UEFA, the redesigned women's competitions, including the Champions League and Europa League, have ensured "that all competitions and all final rounds remain open and accessible to clubs and teams from all associations".

UEFA's letter to DW continues: "During this period, we have seen impressive performances from Eastern European clubs at both club, national and youth national team levels. We will continue to work with the respective associations, as we do with all our member associations, to improve the performance and development of football at a pan-European level."

Scholar Wojtaszyn points out that politics in the region have hindered the development of women's football. Although the communist systems that ruled many of these countries until the 1990s aimed for gender equality, they produced a "paternalistic family model" and "traditional social relationships that limited opportunities for women's emancipation," Wojtaszyn says. The fall of communism then exacerbated the problems even further.

"The collapse of the state sponsorship system presented football clubs with significant economic problems," explains the Polish academic. "Under these conditions, it was extremely difficult for women's football, which attracted less interest, to compete with men's football for sponsorship on the free market." The result: The playing fields were in very poor condition, and the female footballers were amateurs, not professionals.

The rise of right-wing parties in countries such as Romania , Poland, Slovakia and Hungary – and the associated revival of “traditional” values – has also made professional football unattractive for many women.

Goal: Eastern European host of a Women's European Championship

Although his players still need other jobs to make ends meet, Ljubojevic has high hopes for the future. "We have a huge talent pool, just like in men's football, but no one has trained them properly," says the sporting director of ZNK Osijek. "It will be much, much better in a few years. We have great players and are truly operating at the highest level right now."

Nina Patalon is the coach of the Polish national team, which participated in its first European Championship in Switzerland. She expects a sharp increase in the number of players in her country after the European Championship: from 30,000 to 300,000.

Ljubojevic believes that Croatia and other countries in Eastern Europe need something similar to boost their women's football scene. Perhaps by hosting a European Championship themselves. Poland unsuccessfully applied for the 2025 tournament, and there was no candidate from Eastern Europe for 2029.

"Yes, we can do it. But we have to take it seriously. The federation, the country, and everyone else have to invest money and time," says Ljubojevic. "Women's football is the new wave, and we have to ride this new wave. But we're not there yet."

This article was adapted from the original English article "Why was Poland the only easern European team at Euro 2025?"