Women's Football
Breathing
with Whole Lungs
The
best sign that shows how much fans like women's football is the number of spectators
during the final match of the third World Championship (U.S.A. 1999),- more than
90,000 people!
By MILOŠ JEREMIĆ
from Belgrade,
SERBIA
The expansion of women's football in the world starts
in 1991, when the first ladies' world championship was held in China. The best
national teams are the U.S.A. and Germany, which won the title twice, followed
by the representatives of Scandinavia - Norway (winner in 1995) and Sweden, and
of course, the Brazilians. The Germans have won,beside World Titles, six European
Championships, the Norwegians two titles and Sweden was the first European champion
in 1984.
It officially started in 2001 with the European clubs competition
covered by UEFA organization, which equal to men's Champions League. At the most
important women's football competition in Europe, the best teams are the Swedish
Umea and the German clubs Frankfurt and Turbina from Potsdam.
The best
sign to show how much fans like women's football is the number of spectators during
the final match of the third World Championship (U.S.A. 1999),- more than 90,000
people!
South-east
European women's football is still "growing up". There is a lack of
big sponsorship because today, without money, you can not fight against rich owners,
no matter how much talent, ambition and will you have. In Serbia, women started
playing "serious football" in the 1970s. FC Sloga from Zemun became
the unofficial European vice-champion in 1976, and thirteen years later, in the
French city of Menton, Masinac (Nis) won the European title (unofficial clubs
Champions League). But you can not live out of memories. The big problem is a
big difference in quality at the national league, where the best club is Masinac
from Nis (south Serbia), and they won 21 championships and 11 national cups. WFC
Masinac takes part in qualifying Champions League tournaments but they did not
prove themselves on the international scene yet. Beside the strong sponsorships,
if you want success like that, you must to make the national league stronger and
avoid "monopoly" of one team. Football is played in about ten cities
more, but usually under very difficult conditions.
Media support is also
hard to get. Although women's football is in sports family of "basic football"
(with kids, school, invalids and veterans) sports public opinion here almost would
not hear about that. Then one shouldn't wonder why only about a hundred spectators
came to the qualifying match for the European Championship 2009 (Finland). These
are very small number for a sport that in the last 15 years in the world "breaths
with whole lungs".
(Published: 09.03.2008.)
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