With a mere ten weeks before the start of the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup, the female membership of Germany’s football association DFB (Deutscher Fußball-Bund) has reached yet another all-time high. In total, 1.058,990 women and girls play football in Germany, an increase of roughly 10,000 females since 2010.
Which leads to trigger-effects for the number of women’s teams (5,486, up by 145) and overall football-clubs (25,727, up by 24).
Overall, the DFB announced a membership of 6.749,788 members, a slight decrease of 6,774 members (0.1 percent) since last year. Football thus remains as the biggest competitive sport in Germany, while the DFB continues as the leading sporting association under the administrative roof of the German Olympic Sports Association (DOSB). The slightness of the decrease is remarkable in view of the country’s demographic trend. The Federal Office of Statistics had announced in February, that school registration has dropped by 716,900 first graders (1.3 percent) in 2010/2011.
DFB-President Dr. Theo Zwanziger commented the new membership figures: “We would be grossly negligent to believe, that we can even out and compensate the demographic trend. Germany has less young people, and we will most certainly be affected. We need to keep adolescent football players attached to their clubs, they need to keep playing throughout their adult life.”
The 6.7 million members of the DFB spilt-up into: 3.764,880 men – 530,835 juniors between the age of 14 and 18 – 1.395,083 juniors up to the age of 14 – 720,407 women – 338,583 girls up to the age of 16. The overall 171,567 teams split up into: 79,239 teams of boys up to 14 years, 61,230 of teams over 18 years, 17,678 teams of juniors between 15 and 18 years, 7,934 teams of girls up to 16 and 5,486 of women teams.
