Before the home World Cup, Australia’s women footballers around star player Sam Kerr (left) criticized the still large pay gap compared to their male colleagues.
Photo: imago/Joel Carrett
There’s nothing better in life than spending a day off in Sydney. The multicultural power center of Australia with its famous sights is also beguiling on winter days because it is romantic, trendy and incredibly beautiful. Anyone who lets their eyes wander from the Harbor Bridge over the bay with the Opera House for the first time cannot stop raving. In this respect, national coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg did everything right to give her soccer players a Monday off, on which most of them drove from the remote district in Wyong to the metropolis. Open mouths, bright eyes. A football World Cup that starts this Thursday can hardly offer more.
Before the two-time world champion Germany starts the tournament against Morocco in Melbourne on Monday, the hosts will open first: New Zealand against Norway and Australia against Ireland. It’s supposed to be an emotional start, although in Sydney, unlike in Auckland, it certainly succeeds: Everywhere in the city people are warned not to drive into the Olympic Park. The Australia Stadium with its 83,500 seats will be sold out and the atmosphere will be great.
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But don’t let the pictures deceive you: a women’s World Cup is not yet an event where crowds of fans clamor for tickets for every game. There will often be many empty seats, especially in New Zealand, even if the cameras controlled by the world association Fifa will rarely pan to them. After all, she also wants to push this tournament to become a major event.
The ninth edition of the women’s World Cup will be played with 32 nations for the first time. With significantly more teams from Africa, Asia, South and Central America. But the gap, especially in terms of fan support, is still large compared to Europe, where the leagues are developing professional structures much faster. The fact that Jamaica, Panama, Haiti, the Philippines, Zambia and Morocco qualified may not make the World Cup any better in terms of quality, but it does make it more colourful. It definitely helps the development of women’s football in these countries.
Fifa President Gianni Infantino was already rubbing his hands at the 2019 World Cup in France when quota records tumbled worldwide. In the end, well over a billion people watched on television. In addition, there was a social radiance of unprecedented magnitude: how frontwoman Megan Rapinoe used her triumphal march to the fourth World Cup title for the American women to even stand up to President Donald Trump in the fight against all forms of discrimination, drew circles far beyond the sport out.
A women’s World Cup has also become a fight for equality, precisely because of the constant cross-comparisons with men, which does not exist in this form in any other sport. German national players are exemplary in a different way. It’s almost just a side note when Lea Schüller talks in detail about her partnership with the sailor Lara Vadlau. No problem asking the striker about teammate Svenja Huth in front of the team hotel on Sunday, whose wife is expecting a child soon after undergoing artificial insemination. Such openness is still completely foreign to the men in German professional football. Nobody has come out since Thomas Hitzlsperger. An opportunity was missed here, especially around the World Cup in Qatar.
The women are also more honest on the pitch, less acting and bitching, less hypocrisy in front of the camera – and still (still) earning much less. Fifa has tripled bonuses from 2019 to a total of $150 million. However, 440 million were distributed to the men in Qatar. For the first time, the majority is distributed directly to the players. Each already has 30,000 dollars, the equivalent of 28,000 euros for sure. You get a quarter of a million as a world champion.
Still, that’s not enough for some: The 23 Australian women’s World Cup players heavily criticized the new regulation because they already get the same bonuses as their male colleagues from their own association. “Fifa continues to only offer women a quarter of the prize money for the same performance,” it says. But it is also true that the world association only takes in a fraction of the sums for women compared to the men’s tournament. After all: Infantino has announced equal pay for men (WM 2026) and women (2027). It is to be feared that he will then expect the same bids from television stations and advertising partners. It’s not necessarily a matter of harmonization, but of maximizing profits.
Otherwise, Fifa wants to spare the current tournament from charged debates. So she quickly allowed Aboriginal and Maori flags to be flown in all World Cup stadiums. The symbols of the indigenous cultures are allowed, but again the rainbow tie is not. The German captain Alexandra Popp has to choose from an assortment of expressions of solidarity, but the German Football Association (DFB) will not do the showdown with Fifa a second time. After all, Germany is applying for the 2027 World Cup.
The German role in these finals will be exciting anyway. The democratic organizers in Oceania are not a political issue like the Emirate of Qatar – so nobody will work on that. It’s all about attention. Before the 2019 World Cup, Popp had to ask in a commercial: “Do you actually know my name?” Then the sentence followed: “We don’t need eggs, we have ponytails.” Fortunately, such provocations have become superfluous. The EM 2022 has initiated a lot. The DFB women worked with so much passion that almost 18 million people watched the lost final against hosts England.
Popp says today: “We are very authentic and I hope it stays that way.” It would only be dangerous if there was no sporting success. After several sobering test games recently, this cannot be ruled out. Then the DFB could face the next fundamental discussions. For women and girls, the base is not as broad as the association would like. Although more than a million members are female, only just under 200,000 play football at club level. Girls don’t find play opportunities everywhere. Not every Bundesliga club offers them optimal conditions. The struggle for justice continues on many levels.
