Andreas Rettig also perceives a change in the club culture. The DFB managing director describes the clubhouse as a “second home”, as a “place of encounter. The pensioners played skat in the corner, parents were waiting for the children to finish.
Rettig believes: “If the Vereinsheim model becomes more modern again as a meeting place, we can change something there and also trigger something in other areas to improve the importance of sport and exercise.”
Sport does not only take place in clubs. Many club-free adults are registered in gyms, go jogging or do online courses from the living room at home. Children, on the other hand, are more dependent on association membership. Because at school, movement is secondary. The reality of life in leisure time is also different. Playing on the football field, the street or the forest next door is often less attractive than gaming on the smartphone.
Tim Frohwein reports: “We also notice many school children that there are little sporting activity. There are not certain movements because they are too much to sit too much, play too much on the cell phone or console. This is a problem because we create the basis for our body in childhood.”
According to the Digitalverband Bitkom, around two thirds (65 percent) of 6- to 18-year-olds have their own smartphone in this country. Leo-Jonathan Teßmann, sports scientist and young football coach at the second division Hertha BSC, therefore says: “Learning and playing only institutionally takes place. When you go to a big forest with a group of children and say: We meet again in three hours, simply play and have fun, then ask themselves: What should we do now? Should fill the season. “
Teßmann and his colleagues also notice that in their work at Hertha BSC. You work occasionally with so -called “free seasons” before training. The soccer field and all materials are provided one hour before the official start of training. “What we naturally hope for it is that we bring back a bit of a soccer culture that the children simply play the games we played in. That they get creative.” The reality looks different. “But what happens is mostly that one simply stands in the goal and the others from ten meters. The children are in such a kind of consumer posture. They come to the club and expect them to be pretended and get what they have to do. They are no longer in the experience mode as we used to be. This is striking.”