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Van Almsick feels ‘too much yelling’ about equal pay

Dhe former world-class swimmer Franziska van Almsick considers the discussion about equal pay for athletes in football to be too excited and currently inappropriate. “I want to emancipate myself as a woman without being an emancipate. Sometimes the roar is too big for me and it all goes a tad too fast. I would like it to be a bit more sustainable,” said the multiple world and European champion at the “Neuland” future congress in Aachen on Wednesday.

In the US, women soccer players have won a historic collective bargaining agreement that guarantees them equal pay. But you can’t compare that, said the 44-year-old: “Women’s football has a completely different status in the USA – and men’s football too. He’s above everything here with us,” she said: “Sometimes we overpace and just throw slogans out. I find that difficult. We are on the right track, but everything has to go step by step.”

The DFB women do not want to join the corresponding demands at the moment. “It is also true that the marketing revenues of men and women, which also result in the tournament bonuses, are extremely different in the Bundesliga and the national teams,” said national coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg.

“The influencers come from the right and left”

At the same event, Van Almsick complained about the declining status of athletes as role models in society: “We have to be careful not to lose our role as role models,” she said. “The influencers come from the right and left. We athletes and former athletes have to be careful not to let ourselves be driven away. We have to fight our way through for the future so that the athletes continue to be seen as the role models they are,” said the 44-year-old.

Meanwhile, the London-based sprint Paralympic champion Felix Streng criticized the attitude towards sport in Germany. “In London there are many parks with public sports facilities, they are always full. When I enter a sports facility in Germany, I am asked what I want here, whether I am allowed on here and whether I am insured,” he said: “Today there are such high hurdles for children to be able to do sports at all. If I go out, I’ll be sent away again or there’s a five meter high fence that I can’t get over. And if I don’t have access, I reach for the console much more quickly.”

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