Success tears down walls: it was a long journey to the founding of the first national women's football team in Germany, which was only founded in 1981, after the club team (!) SSG 09 Bergisch Gladbach had won the world championship title – an at times absurd story about perseverance and equality told with a twinkle in the eye by the pioneers of the time.

Twenty-seven years after the miracle of Bern, the miracle of Taipei occurred: at the 1981 World Cup in Taiwan, the undefeated club team SSG 09 Bergisch Gladbach wins the title for Germany! Up until then, the all-powerful German Football Federation had not seen any need at all to establish a women's national team, and as a result the German club champions had to compete – and they thrilled the enthusiastic audience. It was a long journey to the establishment of the first national women's football team in Germany, which occurred only after this success and to the sound of the gnashing teeth of the officials. Women's football was even officially banned in Germany up until 1970, meaning that the pioneers who come to word in this documentary started out kicking the ball illegally, often on highly dangerous fields full of potholes.
A lesson in assertiveness and tenacity, told with a lot of winks of the eye by the protagonists of the time. They themselves often seem perplexed, on the one hand, at how they were able to realize their sporting dream, and on the other hand, that the perception of their sport is still far from one of equality.

Reviews and Commentary:

"When Helmut Rahn slogs the ball into the goal on 4 July 1954 and the legendary 'Miracle of Bern' happens, Anne Trabant is five years young – but she's already found on the football field of Emlichheim every Saturday. That's where her dad plays. And daughter Anne has a dream: 'I also wanted to become a national player one day.'
An imprudent desire, because women's football is still an acorn in 1954, one which gets trampled with stud shoes by the German Football Association (DFB) just a year later when it forbids its clubs to allow girls and women play on their fields. Reason: 'In the battle for the ball, the female charm vanishes. Body and soul inevitably suffer damage, and the display of the body violates dexterity and decency.'

But the DFB cannot prevent another miracle from happening 27 years after the miracle of Bern: on 22 October 1981, in front of 36,000 spectators, a women's football team from Bergisch Gladbach won the first Women's Football World Cup in Taiwan. In Germany, however, hardly anyone noticed: the media had found it unnecessary to send reporters.

To this very day, the sensational victory of the team SSG 09 Bergisch Gladbach in Taipei is known only within a few well-informed circles. The Cologne filmmaker John David Seidler is now closing the educational gap with a captivating documentary, We Wanted More – The Miracle of Taipei.

Anne Trabant is instrumental in this miracle. As a player-coach, she fought against all the resistance to women's football with a mixture of stubbornness, discipline and passion. Four decades after the World Cup triumph, filmmaker Seidler has brought the now 71-year-old retired PE teacher in front of the camera one more time. She and nine other World Cup veterans tell us what it was like back then.

How the women kicked in so-called 'wild leagues' despite the DFB ban; how frogs hopped around in neglected showers; how they broke their ankles on bad fields. And how they wanted only one thing: to play football!

In 1970, the DFB had no choice but to lift the ban on women's football: the wild women threatened to form their own league. But when the invitation to the Women's World Cup arrived from Taiwan in 1981, Germany still did not have a women's national team. That's why the best German women's team went to Taiwan: SSG 09 Bergisch Gladbach. To finance the trip, the players sold waffles at the local market. And then the miracle occurs. To be marvelled at in a wonderful film – not only for female football fans. 

In one of its first issues, in 1977, EMMA magazine portrayed the kickers of SSG 09 Bergisch Gladbach. Four years later, the team won the first Women's World Cup, to which Germany did not send a single reporter. But it didn't help. Trainer Anne Trabant: 'The girls are getting crazier about football.' She was to be proven right." (Sabine Schruff, Emma, 27.2.2020)

"In the film, some of the players from the glory days remember the successes, but above all the struggles, they faced at the time. Sometimes together, sometimes individually in the living room at home, they share the very personal, at times amused or still annoyed by the blocks that were put in their way by the DFB. And public recognition from the media was hardly any better. The archival footage on the topic collected by filmmaker John David Seidler, who has been engaged with the subject of football for some time, is likely to amuse younger viewers as much as leave them speechless. A DFB official explains that women are 'better off at the stove', and Sepp Herberger simply states that the contact sport football is not suitable for women. And the legend of the 'Sports Show', Ernst Huberty, proclaimed as late as in the 1970s that there were 'more attractive sports for women' and, furthermore, doctors had already found 'mild muscular deformations' in kicking ladies.

When the interviewer responds that the same is true with male kickers, Huberty's as awkward as blatantly sexist response is, "Sure, but since the woman's body is more desired than that of men, it's worse for her." His WDR colleague Dieter Thoma, host of the talk show 'Kölner Treff' [Cologne Meeting], was no way overshadowed by Huberty when he wanted to know from the players of Bergisch Gladbach, after several championship victories, what it was like in women's football to stop the ball with the breast.

The as insightful as dismaying film uses the history of women's football to document a piece of contemporary West German history. For obvious reasons, the film struggles when it comes to the archival moving images of women kickers. Since the public media paid little attention to the game, shaky amateur shots or snapshots from private photo albums often have to serve as documentation. In many cases, since the material is virtually indeterminable, which woman is chasing the ball in whichever game remains unspecified. And even the (Chinese) TV material of the championship game in Taipei is so coarse-grained that the decisive kick of the final game against the Netherlands has to be surmised instead of seen. In the end, however, none of this detracts much from the entertainment value and punch of this documentary without commentary." (Reinhard Lüke, Film Dienst , 27.2.2020)

Frederik Lang (16.07.2020)

Production Country

Germany (DE)

Production Period

2019

Production Year

2019

color

color

Aspect Ratio

16:9

Duration

Feature-Length Film (61+ Min.)

Type

Documentary

Genre

Biography / Portrait

Topic

Social Engagement, Sport, Equal Rights / Emancipation

Available Media

DCP, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Blu-ray Disc

Original Version

German (de)

DCP

Subtitles

German (partly), German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar)

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

German (partly), German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar)

DVD

Subtitles

German (partly), German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar)

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

English (en), Chinese (long)