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Beyond the Pitch Episode 66: Deep-diving the Scottish Women's Premier League, Frauen Bundesliga, and Vrouwen Eredivisie
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Join Catherine for a deep-dive of leagues around Europe, part 1. This week we look at the Scottish Women's Premier League (Scotland), Frauen Bundesliga (Germany), and Vrouwen Eredivisie (Netherlands).
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Transcript
Introduction & Host's Preferences
00:00:07
Global Sports Podcast Network
Hello, and welcome to Beyond the Pitch, a daily women's football podcast brought to you by the Global Sports Podcast Network. I'm Catherine, and I'm here today by myself, ah which is quite odd. I am debating st singing all by myself like Bridget Jones, although Unfortunately, I'm not sat on a nice sofa drink um eating a pint of ice cream. I wish I was, but I'm not. um So today we've got something a little bit different. I'm going to be talking about three different leagues in European women's football. The reason for this is that I think we have established ways of looking at leagues within the UK now, and we hear quite a bit about the NWSL as well.
00:00:49
Global Sports Podcast Network
but we don't really hear much from leagues across Europe and so I was thinking about this over the summer and I decided to start following a team from Scotland, France, Germany and the nether Netherlands. So in the future on the podcast I'm going to do a deep dive on these clubs um so that we can get to know them but first I thought it would be good to set the scene by talking a little bit about these other leagues ah so that we know about the leagues before we start talking about the clubs.
Scottish Women's Premier League (SWPL) Insights
00:01:19
Global Sports Podcast Network
So to start with, because I am half Scottish, we're going to talk about the Scottish Women's Premier League. So it's the top flight in Scotland. It's called the Scottish Women's Premier League. I'm going to call it the SWPL for short. It has two divisions. Division one has 12 teams and division two has eight teams. The predecessor to this was the Football League, which ran from 1972 to 2002.
00:01:44
Global Sports Podcast Network
The top flight then broke off and formed what we see as the SWPL today. Division one has a league phase followed by a championship round and relegation round. So you have the league phase and then the top six clubs play for the championship like in the and NWSL and the bottom six clubs fight to avoid relegation.
00:02:06
Global Sports Podcast Network
Now, they decided to have two divisions because the difference in competitiveness between the top teams and the lower teams, it made it more competitive to split the 20 teams up into two divisions based on previous performance. The league is broadcast on BBC Scotland and sometimes Sky Sports. In terms of the teams, Glasgow City are by far the most prominent. They have 17 championship wins. That's insane.
00:02:35
Global Sports Podcast Network
Between 2007 and 2015, they only lost four times in the eight years. They won domestic trebles in 2012, 13, 14, 15. They considered asking to join the English league in 2013 as it was more competitive. However, they ultimately decided not to. Can I just go back to that? I mean, winning domestic trebles four years in a row, winning 17 championship wins, going eight years, losing four times.
00:03:06
Global Sports Podcast Network
I mean, huge achievements. It does say, I think it does speak to how there was a lack of competitiveness in the league, unfortunately. um But yeah, still extremely dominant.
Celtic's Aspirations in Women's Football
00:03:22
Global Sports Podcast Network
So like many clubs and organizations, the SWPL really struggled throughout COVID-19 because most of the clubs of revenues came from ticket sales and broadcast rights. And as they were not playing, there was no income.
00:03:36
Global Sports Podcast Network
The league was in dire straits and was potentially not going to survive until a philanthropist called James Anderson and an anonymous donor donated over £400,000 to the league. This was intended to buy them some time with which they could recover. So thank you James Anderson, thank you Anonymous. The biggest ground in Division 1 is Celtic with a capacity of 10,000. The lowest is Motherwell which has a capacity of 500.
00:04:06
Global Sports Podcast Network
In Division 2 Kilmarnock has the largest capacity, 15,000, while Gart Khan has a capacity of 300. So looking, oh, sorry, I completely mispronounced that, Gart Khan. Yeah, I am half Scottish, but I do not speak in Scottish. um So yeah, looking at the current status of the league, Glasgow City atop, perhaps unsurprisingly,
00:04:34
Global Sports Podcast Network
they have 34 points and a goal difference of 49. Dundee are bottom with one point and a goal difference of minus 66. Celtic however are the current champions having won their first league title last year. ah Their manager is Elena Sadiku who is very well regarded. She's actually been in contention in some circles for ah the Arsenal job, some people are talking about that. ah She's quite young, I think she's Swedish and she just seems to have a knack of, um she's come in and kind of done a wonderful job for Celtic so there's kind of a lot of talk about the Arsenal job. I personally, I am a huge kind of advocate of
00:05:24
Global Sports Podcast Network
staying somewhere for a while to get to kind of fully fully formed if that makes sense and to develop and I think she's developing really quickly with Celtic and Celtic are developing really quickly under her leadership and she talks about you know wanting to make Celtic a dominant force in women's football and you know, ah I really want to see them a Scottish team achieve that. And with her as the manager, I hope she stays because I think it seems like the relationship there um between the club, the players and her is working really well. So and I mean, I would like to see that continue. um In the league, though, you can really see the difference between the top and the bottom teams ah reflected in some of the score lines.
Personal Connection to Aberdeen Women's Team
00:06:12
Global Sports Podcast Network
Dundee have, as I mentioned, are bottom of the league and they've been pretty beaten up this season. They've been beating 13-0 by Glasgow City, 9-0 by Hearts, Rangers beat Montrose 10-2 and Motherwell beat Aberdeen 6-0. And this is where I just want to say, I mean, I don't have really a Scottish team. um According to my dad who, I mean his family are from north of Inverness, he was brought up in Aberdeenshire but he always says that we should support Ross County because that's where our family's from. Aberdeen have a women's team in the league so I think I would probably go with Aberdeen as my club um and I used to live fairly near the stadium so
00:07:06
Global Sports Podcast Network
Yeah, I would go with Aberdeen as my club and say I have a soft spot for them. I always want to see Aberdeen do well. 6-0 though, come on Aberdeen. Let's not have another a repeat of that.
00:07:20
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The Global Sports Podcast
Global Sports Podcast Network Promotion
00:07:22
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Network is changing the face of football podcasts for dedicated daily content for every Premier League team, women's football, fantasy football, and a daily Premier League wrap-up, broadcasted in five different languages. This is your one-stop shop for your daily football fix. Find GSPN wherever you find your usual podcasts.
00:07:41
Global Sports Podcast Network
So for our second topic, um
Frauenbundesliga Overview
00:07:43
Global Sports Podcast Network
for our second league rather, I thought we would hop across to Germany and talk about the Frauenbundesleiger. Now this is where I've already made a cock up in pronunciations with ah something from a country that I'm actually from. I'm definitely going to mispronounce something ah in this section and I do apologise. I have done my research ahead of time. However,
00:08:07
Global Sports Podcast Network
I'm still new to podcasting and I still do make mistakes. So just accept my sincere apologies. I do not mean to mispronounce anything. um So the Fraunbundersläger is sponsored by Google Pixel. And this is quite obvious. If you watch any of their games, you quite often see Google Pixel prominently displayed. Like they have quite a lot of advertising. It's the top flight in German women's football.
00:08:35
Global Sports Podcast Network
currently contested by 12 teams however from next season this is increasing to 14 teams so they're kind of the first league in um the first european league to to branch out and go to 14 teams which is quite exciting games are broadcast on dozen and you can watch them for free through the dozen app or channel and This is a shout out. I really like Dazzan. I think the streams always work for me. They're quite often on YouTube as well. And I like just being able to watch the games through them. I think ah the commentators tend to be really good. um You don't tend to to get many kind of commentators where you listen to them go, oh God, can you please shut up? ah So yeah, I shout out, but Dazzan,
00:09:26
Global Sports Podcast Network
So the original Frauenbundes Leaguer ran from 1974 to 1990. However, this did not happen every year. I think it happened like 16, 17 times. um So it wasn't every year. The league kind of as as it is was founded in 1990, which is the year that I was born. So I share my birthday with the Frauenbundes Leaguer. That's very nice to ah to know. And I think must actually make it one of the oldest women's leagues in Europe. I can't think.
00:09:54
Global Sports Podcast Network
I mean, yes, there were kind of other, there were amateur leagues across Europe, but I'm not sure, like, formally, how many other leagues there were in 1990, which makes me sound really old. And yeah, I am really old. Oh, God, I'm gonna have to go away and just think about that for a second. I mean, I'm not that old, like, 34 isn't that old nowadays, right? Help me out, listener, please.
00:10:24
Global Sports Podcast Network
Back to the Frauenbundersleiger. Initially it was contested but in two divisions, ah divided into north and south, however these were merged in 1997. Now the league is semi-professional, which I have a lot of thoughts about. Most players are paid, however this really depends on club. I mean you've got some of the really big clubs like Wolfsburg, Bayern Munich, I think they probably played their ah pay their players quite well. However, some of the smaller clubs, especially lower down in the league, who tend to kind of consistently finish lower down in the league, don't really pay their players enough to live on. So some of the players, most of the players probably end up studying or having other jobs on the side. um So yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about that because really I think
00:11:20
Global Sports Podcast Network
If you're, the whole point is we want women's football to grow. And to do that, we need women's football to be like the football players to perform at a deep really good level. And a lot of the complaints that you hear from men online are like, oh, but the standard is likely to team. I'm like, well, with a lot of leaks that, especially those that are semi-professional or amateur, of course, because you're not spending every day focusing fully on football like these women have to go to work they have other things to think about they're not able to spend their days kind of structure their days around training around what's best for their bodies what's best ah for their football performance that's not something that they're kind of able to do so if we start paying
00:12:12
Global Sports Podcast Network
players making these leagues fully professional and start playing them really good salaries so that they don't have to do this extra work, do this extra studying, then they can dedicate that time. They can fully dedicate themselves to football and to kind of well working at football through their days. And um I think that impacts everything. So yeah, fully belief in paying women's footballers um extent. I think that does also vary based on whether they're part of the national teams, like players who are part of national teams get paid more, I think. um I'm not entirely sure how all that works, so don't take my word for it, but um but yeah, this is just all based on what I've read. So back to the Franbansliga, the club who comes first are the champions, woo and the club coming last are relegated to the second tier. The top three teams play in the Champions League,
00:13:09
Global Sports Podcast Network
And the league now operates on a typical home and away system. So you play every team at home and you play every team away. However, it has gone through a few iterations like most of these leagues have, I think.
00:13:22
Global Sports Podcast Network
ah Frankfurt and Wolfsburg have the most titles, they have seven. However Bayern Munich have won the last two leagues. I mean also so can I just say again if you've listened to this podcast before you will know that one of my favourite players, Georgia Stanway, plays for Bayern Munich and I mean she went there and they've been winning titles. Can I just point that out? Yeah.
00:13:46
Global Sports Podcast Network
Stadiums range from 24,000 capacity at Freiburg to Leipzig, which only has capacity of 2015. However, that's still quite a bit bigger than some of those Scottish grounds we were talking about before.
00:14:00
Global Sports Podcast Network
um So if you remember Motherwell with a capacity of 500 and Kilmarnock, well, 15,000, but Gartken has a capacity of 300 only, so compare that. I mean, the lowest being 2,000 is still pretty okay. In the early 90s, the average attendance to a Frau and Bundesliga game tended to be around 200. This increased significantly when in 2003, Germany won the Women's World Cup,
00:14:30
Global Sports Podcast Network
Um, so again, we can really see, I think that happened obviously with England when we won the Euros in 2022 and attendance kind of shot up. It really shows that performance is a huge, um, factor in getting people to come to the stadiums. In 2013, 14, the average attendance was up to 1,185. And last season it was over 2,500. So there's been a really strong growth in recent years.
00:15:01
Global Sports Podcast Network
Attendances were particularly high in the 2223 season after Germany's success in the 2022 Euros. ah Just for those who were living under Iraq and don't know, Germany got the final where they were beaten by England 2-1. Yeah, and that was a very, very happy day if you're an English fan. Yeah, what a game. Wembley being full.
00:15:28
Global Sports Podcast Network
You can just, I wasn't there, unfortunately, but
Impact of Women's Euro 2022 on England
00:15:30
Global Sports Podcast Network
you can even sense kind of the volume, how loud Wembley got at the final whistle and Chloe Kelly kind of scoring that final goal and then taking a shot off and swinging her shirt above her head. It's all just.
00:15:45
Global Sports Podcast Network
Yeah, magic magical, magical day. um Anyway, Germany did obviously get to the final and that is a huge achievement in itself. As ah we say, only two only two teams can be in a final, so ah you still do pretty well to get there.
00:16:03
Global Sports Podcast Network
So the current record is from that 22-23 season, which is 38,365, which is really, really good. I mean Arsenal in England, I think have some of the highest in English in women's football, generally in the fifties at the Emirates sometimes, 50,000, but 38, I mean, it's not shabby, is it? So in the Froune Bundesliga, there is still a huge difference between the top teams and those consistently lower in the league.
00:16:32
Global Sports Podcast Network
Many of the lower teams are semi-professional and so players cannot dedicate themselves entirely to football as I said, which I mean, yeah, I've, I've had my rant about that. I can rant again on a different day. Uh, lower clubs actually exist on less than 500,000 euros a year, which initially when I heard about that, I thought that, oh, that sounds like quite a lot, but then when you actually break it down.
00:16:55
Global Sports Podcast Network
And you think you've got to pay for facilities you've got to pay for like kits and um everything else or the kit that you need you've got to pay staff I mean and you've got technical stuff you've got um kind of the physical stuff like the physiotherapist you've got nutritionists some clubs have, you've got kind of to really make a go of it and be a really top team, you've got a huge expense on staff. And then you've got the players as well. And you can kind of see where that 500,000 euros a year actually doesn't go very far. And you can really see where players end up having to take second jobs um to help subsidize just living.
00:17:37
Global Sports Podcast Network
So like quite a lot of leagues around Europe, in a difference to the world's most competitive leagues, which, I mean, maybe this is um controversial, I don't think so, the WSL and the NWSL in America. So unlike those two, there don't tend to be many foreign players in a frown Bundesliga team outside of the top teams like Wolfsburg and Bayern. In fact, since the 2006-07 season,
00:18:03
Global Sports Podcast Network
No Bundesliga team is allowed to have more than three non-EU foreigners paying for them, so Georgia Stanway, I imagine now since Brexit, will count as one of Bayern's non-EU foreigners, ah so they're only allowed two more. The top appearance holder, and this is where my pronunciation is going to fail me because I did look this up how ah This is pronounced but I just couldn't find a straight answer. So the top appearance holder is Kirsten Gefreichs who made over 350 appearances scoring 248 goals. ah She was a striker obviously with the 248 goals.
00:18:43
Global Sports Podcast Network
I mean that would be seriously impressive, like imagine a defender scoring 248 goals in 350 appearances. Yeah, ah that would and that would be something strange. ah She also played very briefly for Washington Spirit over in the States, making 10 appearances and scoring one goal. She is currently an assistant coach at Frankfurt. So thinking about the Fraunbunders League currently,
00:19:08
Global Sports Podcast Network
Bayern Munich have won the last two leagues, as I said, Georgia-Stanway, special ingredient. However, Wolfsburg are currently top this year with 25 points and a goal difference of 19. It is fairly close, though. Frankfurt and Bayern are equal on points, two behind Wolfsburg on 23. However, Frankfurt are ahead on goal difference. they've scored ah They have a goal difference of 27 compared to Bayern's 19.
00:19:34
Global Sports Podcast Network
Now, turbine Potsdam are in the relegation spot. And I've heard quite a bit about their supporters being brilliant. So I'm really sorry, Potsdam. Yeah, I have a friend from Germany who said that they're a lovely team and their supporters are really, really great. So I am sorry. ah They have one point and a goal difference of minus 30.
00:19:55
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Here at the Global Sports Podcast Network, we spent a lot of time selecting our delivery platform. Zancaster came out the clear winner with 4K video recording from your phone and AI editing that automatically removes all those ums and ahs. We'll see. It's super easy to start a podcast that sounds great and is delivered efficiently. If you're ready to tell your story, check out the link in the show description to learn more about Zancaster.
00:20:20
Global Sports Podcast Network
For our last ah league of today, we're going to talk about the women's erudivisae over in the Netherlands.
Eredivisie History and Developments
00:20:28
Global Sports Podcast Network
So the league was founded in 2007 as a semi-professional league. Before then there had been various amateur competitions since the 1970s. I believe in the Netherlands it was very similar to in England that football was banned for a very long time, ah women's football that is, they would never be ban men's football. So yeah the 1970s and I know that it's in the 1970s that the first
00:20:51
Global Sports Podcast Network
Netherlands national team, women's national team, were was kind of founded. ah There were six founding members of the Eredivisé, ADO the Hague or ADO the Hague, AZ, SC, Heeren Veen, FC Twent, FC Utrecht and Willem II.
00:21:10
Global Sports Podcast Network
The five first five still compete in the league, however, Willem was disbanded in 2011 due to sponsor withdrawing support from women's teams, which is really, really sad. um I feel for all those players and supporters who lost their team can't be a nice thing. So in terms of history, the Dutch FA first started thinking about a professional women's league in the 1990s due to the growing popularity of the women's game, the 1999 World Cup in particular.
00:21:39
Global Sports Podcast Network
However, the Netherlands national team throughout the 1990s wasn't doing that well. um They didn't qualify for the Euros or the World Cup or the Olympics and the best Dutch players were going overseas to play in other leagues because there wasn't that competitive league in.
00:21:58
Global Sports Podcast Network
and the Netherlands, obviously you had the US and I think quite a lot of Dutch players went there throughout the 90s. So this compelled the Dutch FA to take that next step of forming a professional league in 2007.
00:22:14
Global Sports Podcast Network
AZ were the league's champions for the first three years, um however since then FC Twent have had a bit of a monopoly monopoly um They've won nine championships, Ajax have won three, and Addo the Hague won once in 2011, 2012. And you might have heard of the woman who was the manager of Addo at that point, because she's the current head coach of the England women's national team, Serena Wiegman.
00:22:41
Global Sports Podcast Network
So yeah, she bought Addo the Hague a championship title in 2011-12. Following that season, um a number of the clubs experienced financial difficulties, which is, again, really upsetting. And the league was disbanded because they kept ah pulling out. Due to this, the Dutch FA joined forces with the Belgian FA and they created a joint league, the Beeney League.
00:23:07
Global Sports Podcast Network
Which is just a great name. Can we just stop for a second and think about that? I mean, the Beanie League. I'm probably mispronouncing it, but it just sounds so nice. ah The Beanie League. So the Beanie League ran from 2012 to 2015. The Eredivisé was reintroduced for the 2015-16 season.
00:23:30
Global Sports Podcast Network
Now the league used to work in a similar way to the and NWSL ah with the top teams competing to be champions and the bottom teams competing to stay in the league. However, it is currently a normal round robin like ah the WSL with each team playing home and away, ah playing each other home and away. The top two teams play in the Champions League and the bottom team gets relegated. So most of the Eredivisé is semi-professional again.
00:23:59
Global Sports Podcast Network
Um, although players receive salaries, this is not enough to live on and most work or study separately to football. Uh, which again, let's just focus on that for a moment. I mean, if you're talking about wanting to grow the women's game and a criticism that a lot of people have about the women's game is that, Oh, the stand, the standards of like the playing isn't there. And I'm like, well, unless you invest.
00:24:26
Global Sports Podcast Network
in these women so that they don't have to work and split their focus, split their time, take that energy away from football and put it into
Investment Needs in Women's Football
00:24:34
Global Sports Podcast Network
working somewhere else, then how are you going to get those performances up? You have to invest before you can actually get a return on that investment. You can't just expect a return on that investment without actually putting anything in upfront. That just doesn't make sense.
00:24:50
Global Sports Podcast Network
Anyway, I am very able to rant for quite a while about that. So if you're interested in that, then just call me. um Again, like the Scottish and the German leagues, most of the players are Dutch. ah However, there are a few Belgians and a couple from elsewhere.
00:25:07
Global Sports Podcast Network
thinking specifically in Ajax, Lillie Johans, who has just um recently confirmed that she will compete with the US women's national team. ah She moved to the Netherlands when she was, I think it was 10, and she's only 17 now. But yeah, she's just confirmed that she'll stay with the US national team. um So she might be playing at Wembley later this month against England. Come on England, we can do it. We have so many injuries, but we can do it.
00:25:38
Global Sports Podcast Network
um Anyway, so FC Twent were the champions last year. This season is actually looking quite competitive. ah There's a four or five horse race. I think the league is still suffering from kind of side effects of that time when it was split into two and you had the top few teams competing for the championship and the bottom few teams competing to stay in the league. Because it seems very much like you have kind of a top set and lower sets and the positions within the top set seem to change and within the bottom set seem to change, but you don't seem to get like teams going from the bottom to the top set or um really moving down. Although Ado the Hague are not doing particularly well this season,
00:26:27
Global Sports Podcast Network
But they've been missing, if you haven't seen, I've mentioned her before, but if you haven't seen Lobkert, Lunan's goals, you should, because they're really, really impressive. And yeah, so shout out there.
00:26:41
Global Sports Podcast Network
um PSV are currently top on 19 points, they're only above Ajax on goal difference though. Utrecht are on 15 points, Feyenoord on 14 and FC Twent on 11. Twent do have a game in hand however, their match against Addo was postponed due to the Champions League. Currently Excelsior are in the relegation spot with three points and a minus 13 goal difference. Now that's not actually considering What else we've heard today with minus 66 gold difference in the Scottish League and what was it in the German League minus 30 odd gold difference for the bottom teams minus 13 isn't huge.
00:27:20
Global Sports Podcast Network
um So that's a boost for you, Xassia, sorry. ah There are a number of matches this weekend. I just wanted to highlight as well that the Dutch League is mainly broadcast on ESPN, um which isn't as accessible as it does, or not to me, maybe it's just me. ah There are highlights on YouTube.
00:27:43
Global Sports Podcast Network
So this is a plea to Dazzan to please pick up the error to say it would make it so much easier to watch. And we all would like to watch it. ah So that was it for our first kind of roundup of a few
Teaser for Future Podcast Episodes
00:27:56
Global Sports Podcast Network
European leagues. We've still got France to go. We've still got Italy to go. ah We will talk about Sweden, Denmark, Norway. So we've got quite a few leagues to go. I hope you'll join us for that and we'll see if we can get a co-host on.
00:28:11
Global Sports Podcast Network
um that I can bore to death with talking about different leagues. So yeah, thank you for joining us and we look forward to welcoming you to the next episode of Beyond the Pitch.