A 6-1 victory against Serbia to round off the first stage of qualification means the DFB women’s U19s have won their group with a 100 percent record and have reached the second round. Three games, three wins and a goal difference of 15 to 1 are stats to be proud of. Nevertheless, DFB-Manager Maren Meinert is not fully satisfied. "It was nowhere near perfect," said the 42-year-old in a DFB.de interview. In December, the draw for the second round will take place. Meinert is clear about her aim: "We want to win this group as well, because we want to make it to the Euros."
DFB.de: Ms. Meinert, three games, three wins – are you altogether happy?
Maren Meinert: No, I’m not. The results are fine. But we have to admit that they were just three formalities. Hungary was as expected the strongest opposition. But we just had to beat Serbia and especially Kazakhstan quite comprehensively.
DFB.de: Your team managed that as well. Why the slight discontent?
Maren Meinert:Especially against Azerbaijan, despite the 7-0 victory we were not happy. We made it far too difficult for ourselves. It took us half an hour to take the lead. We should be scoring a lot earlier in games like this. But we addressed the problems. The good thing is that the team showed against Serbia that they know what it’s all about.
DFB.de: What is it all about?
Meinert: We’re in a process. It’s about the players understanding that we’re not playing girls’ football anymore, but women’s football. We want to take this road together, and we’re heading in the right direction. It was always going to take us a bit of time. That’s why this tournament was so important.
DFB.de: How did you experience the tournament?
A 6-1 victory against Serbia to round off the first stage of qualification means the DFB women’s U19s have won their group with a 100 percent record and have reached the second round. Three games, three wins and a goal difference of 15 to 1 are stats to be proud of. Nevertheless, DFB-Manager Maren Meinert is not fully satisfied. "It was nowhere near perfect," said the 42-year-old in a DFB.de interview. In December, the draw for the second round will take place. Meinert is clear about her aim: "We want to win this group as well, because we want to make it to the Euros."
DFB.de: Ms. Meinert, three games, three wins – are you altogether happy?
Maren Meinert: No, I’m not. The results are fine. But we have to admit that they were just three formalities. Hungary was as expected the strongest opposition. But we just had to beat Serbia and especially Kazakhstan quite comprehensively.
DFB.de: Your team managed that as well. Why the slight discontent?
Maren Meinert:Especially against Azerbaijan, despite the 7-0 victory we were not happy. We made it far too difficult for ourselves. It took us half an hour to take the lead. We should be scoring a lot earlier in games like this. But we addressed the problems. The good thing is that the team showed against Serbia that they know what it’s all about.
DFB.de: What is it all about?
Meinert: We’re in a process. It’s about the players understanding that we’re not playing girls’ football anymore, but women’s football. We want to take this road together, and we’re heading in the right direction. It was always going to take us a bit of time. That’s why this tournament was so important.
DFB.de: How did you experience the tournament?
Meinert: Hungary to start with was a bit of a challenge. They were the hosts and made life difficult for us. It doesn’t surprise me that they came second in the end. We’ve just spoken about the Kazakhstan game, and against Serbia we took the lead early on. The game had been decided from then.
DFB.de: 4-0 after half an hour. Why did it go so well in this game?
Meinert: The difference between this game and the ones before it were that we took our chances. You can’t just do anything you want in front of goal. We addressed that before the game. We need to make the right decisions. That’s a learning process as well though, which the players will have to take. It’s nice to see these things take their course quite quickly. All in all it was okay. We can build on it.
DFB.de: So would you say the team has developed in the last few days?
Meinert: Definitely. It would be bad if they hadn’t. We now go our separate ways with a good feeling. We’ve got an intense week behind us now. In this time we made it very clear what we all expect. The development has not finished yet. It’s only just begun.
DFB.de: Where do you go from here?
Meinert: We’re looking forward to the second round of the European Championship qualification next year. We’re excited to see which teams we will be drawn against on the 10th December. One thing is for certain: we need to keep improving if we want to progress. We have to win the group if we want to qualify. That is out aim, and we’re working to achieve it. We took the first few steps in Hungary, and now it has to continue.
