1. FC Union Berlin | Showing off and boasting: Union's women's footballers and their president

When the women's team of 1. FC Union Berlin play their first ever away game in the Bundesliga, they'll experience a lot of things that Dirk Zingler doesn't like at all. The Berlin women's destination on Matchday 2 is Leverkusen. And if you believe the words of Union's club president, football under the Bayer logo is as forward-looking as, say, a steam locomotive.

Wild goings-on

"When I see the financial opportunities we have in professional football, it's shameful how little gets through to women," says Zingler. Bayer Leverkusen 's women's football team has been playing in the Bundesliga for seven years and has steadily improved during that time; fourth place last season is their best result so far. Exact figures are not available, but if you assume that first-division clubs spend an average of €2.4 million per season on their entire staff, you can roughly estimate how large the gap is between the women's and men's footballers at Bayer. While the men's squad has a total value of almost €400 million, Leverkusen's sporting director, Simon Rolfes, says: " Women's football is not helped by higher salaries." Rolfes is said to have paid one of his best players, Florian Wirtz, €7.5 million a year.

One can certainly lament these conditions, especially with regard to men's football, where it's perfectly normal for Wirtz to move to Liverpool for €150 million. However, any criticism remains blunt if no solution is offered. On the one hand, Union Berlin and its players are participating in this wild activity within the limits of Köpenick's possibilities. And if the club were ever in a position to buy a player for €150 million, they probably would. Why? Because that's how the market works. Union Berlin's president gave precisely this answer after the women's team's promotion to the top flight at the end of May when asked by "nd" what appropriate salaries for female footballers were.

Sad business trip

Zingler doesn't provide any figures either. However, the club is investing heavily in its women's team – and has brought an almost completely new starting eleven to Köpenick this summer. With the signing of 22-year-old striker Hannah Eurlings , 1. FC Union Berlin even set a new transfer record in Belgian women's football – a transfer fee of €120,000 is said to have flowed to Leuven.

The newly promoted team wants nothing to do with relegation with this team. The first, historic Bundesliga match ended last Sunday in a 1:1 draw against 1. FC Nuremberg. A dropped point for the Köpenick women, who dominated the game , but their first in the Bundesliga. And they celebrated in style – with more than 11,000 fans in the Alte Försterei. This puts the Berlin women in third place in the attendance table behind FC Bayern Munich and Hamburger SV. Last season, the average attendance in the Bundesliga was just under 2,700, with Leverkusen bottom of the table. Probably even fewer than the roughly 1,000 fans who usually watch the Bayer women's games will come to the Ulrich Haberland Stadium on Monday evening. So it could be a very dreary business trip for Union's women's football team, because many see Leverkusen as the dark horse.

Angry President

Such a scenario enrages Zingler. In addition to all the Bundesliga competitors who let their women play on secondary pitches, the Union's president also took on the DFB before the start of the season . "We have to go to the stadiums, to attractive locations, and then produce the whole thing professionally," demands Zingler. He criticizes the association for the completely fragmented Bundesliga matchday: From Friday to Monday, there are seven different kick-off times in order to market each game individually. The event must first be made attractive before it is multiplied and brought into people's living rooms. The DFB argues that this model brings in more money than ever before. And that the revenue from the sale of media rights, approximately five million euros, is passed on "almost one-to-one" to the clubs, allowing them to invest more.

Is this really a big shot from Köpenick trying to explain women's football to everyone else? This impression quickly arises when the president of a club that has only been offering its female footballers professional conditions for two years says: "Women's football is kept small in Germany."

Criticism from the comfort zone

We are used to inertia, ignorance and symbolic politics from the German Football Association (DFB) and clubs in professional football . But Zingler is coming from a comfort zone with his criticism. In women's football, stadiums are particularly full where there is a strong connection between the fans and the club. And in this regard, Union's president and his colleagues have done a lot right over the past 20 years. Last season, an average of 7,000 spectators didn't come to the Alte Försterei to watch their Union women's team play second division football against Weinberg or Andernach - they came to see 1. FC Union Berlin . This gave Köpenick the fourth-highest average attendance in all of Europe. "Més que un club," they say at FC Barcelona. Because Barcelona is "more than a club" for Catalans, it is no coincidence that it holds the world record for a women's football match with almost 92,000 spectators.

The lectures from Berlin certainly didn't go down well with clubs and officials who have long been trying to advance women's football. Perhaps all those have reached limits that will eventually stop the Union women's team? In any case, Zingler and his Köpenick club won't change anything if they only spend "what's necessary to achieve sporting success" on the women's side and irresponsibly leave further development to the market.