Germany hails Kolkata’s women football

On the occasion of the on-going Women's Football World Cup in Germany, the German Consulate General in Kolkata organised a football match on Tuesday, 12 July. Three women’s football clubs from Kolkata were invited to play against the newly created ‘German Consulate Women’s Team’.

The three teams—‘Friends of the Stadium’, ‘Jubak Sangha’ and ‘G C Roy Memorial Football Club’—sent five players each to kick the ball at the Consulate’s Alipore campus. ‘Friends of the Stadium’ came out as the winners after a penalty shootout. While handing out soccer equipment to the players of the participating clubs, Consul General Rainer Schmiedchen expressed surprise at the response to the event and said, “Kolkata football ladies are great!”

Though Kolkata’s craze for football is legendary, the city’s women footballers hardly enjoy the same adulation as their male counterparts. The German Consulate’s interest in women’s football and offer to help organise coaching clinics with the German Football Association (DFB) have been welcomed. According to a report in The Telegraph, Swapan Dutta, the honorary joint assistant secretary of the Indian Football Association (IFA) said, “This is wonderful news for our girls, who have to brave stiff odds like a severe paucity of grounds to train, having to use ill-equipped men’s changing rooms and often not having enough to eat after a tough practice session.”

Enlarge image (© GK Kalkutta) In his interactions with the press after the football fiesta, Schmiedchen remarked, “We met very friendly, active and charming people from our host city on a level that is usually not covered by diplomacy. Sports is not only good for health, it becomes more and more important as a means of connecting people from different nations; so sports and diplomacy have a lot in common.”

What the event and the encouragement offered by Germany means to the young sportswomen was summarised by Durga Roy, secretary of the G C Roy Memorial Football Club. As reported in the press, she has been spending a bulk of her state government salary on the girls to provide them with kits, food and in some cases, even shelter. “Our girls are fighters and can go a long way with a little push,” she said.

© German Information Centre South Asia, German Consulate Kolkata