10-01-2003, 11:47 PM
A soccer (football ! ;p) fan from Germany here.
6:1 vs Argentinia, our girls are playing a nice tourney so far, hehe ;)
At first, you have to realize one thing: European soccer (at least huge parts of it) works quite different from any sport in the US and from any other sport in Europe. It is not easy to explain.
Soccer in Europe has alot to do with tradition and social contexts. The actual performance at the sport is often of secondary interest.
For example, a third-league club can easily have a larger fanbase than a first-league one.
No matter how good women were at soccer in Germany, it would never be a "big thing". It simply lacks the necessary "social roots" to attract a really huge fanbase.
People just don´t identify with women´s teams. They identify with the traditional soccer clubs, usualy regardless of the team´s performance.
There are female soccer fans in Europe, but they are few. All in all, it really is a "guy thing". In Germany, the quote of females in the stadiums is probably somewhere around 5% or less.
I have no statistic at hand, but that is my personal impression (I usualy see about 2-3 matches per month live).
Women´s teams do not have any "real fans" at all, as far as I can tell. Neither male nor female ones. Even B teams of traditional clubs sometimes have more fans than women´s teams :)
Moldran
6:1 vs Argentinia, our girls are playing a nice tourney so far, hehe ;)
At first, you have to realize one thing: European soccer (at least huge parts of it) works quite different from any sport in the US and from any other sport in Europe. It is not easy to explain.
Soccer in Europe has alot to do with tradition and social contexts. The actual performance at the sport is often of secondary interest.
For example, a third-league club can easily have a larger fanbase than a first-league one.
No matter how good women were at soccer in Germany, it would never be a "big thing". It simply lacks the necessary "social roots" to attract a really huge fanbase.
People just don´t identify with women´s teams. They identify with the traditional soccer clubs, usualy regardless of the team´s performance.
There are female soccer fans in Europe, but they are few. All in all, it really is a "guy thing". In Germany, the quote of females in the stadiums is probably somewhere around 5% or less.
I have no statistic at hand, but that is my personal impression (I usualy see about 2-3 matches per month live).
Women´s teams do not have any "real fans" at all, as far as I can tell. Neither male nor female ones. Even B teams of traditional clubs sometimes have more fans than women´s teams :)
Moldran