Berlin (dpa) – The new DFB Vice President Silke Sinning is concerned about the situation in the girls’ and women’s field in German football.
“We can’t play games, we can’t support top players if fewer and fewer women play football,” said the 52-year-old in an interview with the “Frankfurter Rundschau”. The decline in girls is also alarming. The greatest decline is in the age groups in which puberty occurs: “Training and competition are often simply no longer interesting enough.”
For example, B-Juniors would have told you that Sunday morning play dates would not suit them because they like to go out on Saturday evenings, explained Sinning. She demanded: “With these issues, we have to listen much more closely to the grassroots.”
The professor of sports pedagogy and sports didactics also addressed the question of how to get more girls with a migration background to play football. “Basically, I find that women in typically male-dominated sports such as boxing or soccer have it easier these days than men who are interested in female-attributed sports such as synchronized swimming, ballet or ice dancing,” she said.
It is difficult for the clubs to get into traditional family structures where men still hold the classic management position. “That’s why for me the kindergarten and the school are the first approach to creating offers here. If the girls here are enthusiastic about football, then they also manage to convince their father that they want to play football in the club,” explained sense
She surprisingly prevailed against Rainer Koch in the DFB elections last Friday. Sinning used to play football herself, before she started working as a football official alongside her job.