Siegfried Dietrich from Eintracht Frankfurt sees the EM in England as a “quantum leap” for professional women’s football.
The sports director believes in a new “age of perception”. The enthusiasm for the tournament on the island “can really be built on,” said Dietrich of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)”.
“We now have the radiance of the European Championships and the wave of sympathy for our players behind us,” said Dietrich (65), who is also chairman of the DFB committee for the women’s Bundesliga: “At the last DFB Bundestag we saw the professionalization of the 1 . and Bundesliga 2 – I see very good chances that we’ll make faster progress now.”
According to Dietrich, there are three tasks to be tackled: “Further development of the structures and training conditions; better marketing with significantly higher revenues for growing economic stability; higher perception and visibility of our games.”
The international match of the runners-up European champions against France on October 7th at 8:30 p.m. in Dresden is ideal for this, as is the opening game of the Bundesliga between Frankfurt and Bayern Munich on September 16th at 7:15 p.m. “We want to present ourselves on the front stage and no longer only in the afternoon program,” said Dietrich.
Unlike after the home World Cup in 2011, where the German team failed in the quarter-finals, he sees more signs that the tournament hype will pay off in everyday life. The “then summer fairy tale” was “not finished due to the early departure”. In addition, “professional women’s football wasn’t at the level it is today,” said Dietrich.