The Idea

The history of women’s soccer is still mostly told by the associations, i.e. FIFA and its sub-organizations and members. Almost everywhere in the world, however, this is only a small part of football history. Because football is and has always been a sport that everyone could and wanted to play at any time. Women (as well as men) often played football for decades before a formal framework such as an association was even formed.

Even when federations around the world suddenly banned women from playing football, they continued to play – often with great success and in front of thousands of fans. We want to tell the story of women’s football in full. From charity games and amateur kicks to unofficial clubs, leagues and World Cups to the era of FIFA women’s soccer from the 1990s onwards. From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

Thus, we invite experts from all over the world to tell us the story of women’s football in their country. We will collect these stories and publish them on this blog.

Articles we love

We want to give the history of women’s soccer the space it deserves. Subsequently, there will be no limit to the length of the articles and we explicitly encourage authors to submit longreads of 2000 words or more.

The articles are divided into “episodes” that can best reflect the development of women’s soccer in the country. The history of German women’s football, e.g., can be roughly divided into four episodes:
Early Workers Football (until about 1950), the long period of women’s football prohibition (1950-1970), an early internationalization (1970-1990) and finally the episode of FA-organized football (from about 1990).

We also would love to illustrate the articles – with historical newspaper clippings, pictures, or images of memorabilia commemorating key events from each episode. Again, we don’t set an upper limit, but would like at least one image per episode. The images will be incorporated accordingly through one image gallery per episode.

For each article we will create a map of the corresponding country, which shows the most important places of the article. By this, we want to give the reader the chance to understand where clubs like NSG Oberst Schiel are located or where the city of Bad Neuenahr actually is.

For Authors

If you are interested in writing about your country, or a country whose football history you know well, please contact us. We will then “reserve” the country for you and discuss all further details with you so that the article fits into the blog in the best possible way.

Please write your articles in English. If you want to publish the article in the language of the country you are writing about, we will be happy to put this text online as well, in order to spread women’s football history as widely as possible!

You prefer to talk?

We also run a (German, but where apt also English) podcast called “Legende Verloren” (“lost legend”) – and we would love to hear you talk on the show! To get an idea about or podcast, find an interview with us on a special episode of “Anyone’s Game” HERE.