Yes I meant Angel City, I just asked the question during the playoffs and with all the posts about Ali my head was probably full of Gotham lol.
I have mixed feelings about the whole issue. But that's because I have mixed feelings about the whole development of women's football.
RB is a thing in itself, I've decided to ignore this "club" in the meantime. They're there, we're not going to get rid of them, so I can get unnecessarily upset or save my energy and ignore them. If they can at least raise the standard of the Bundesliga with their infrastructure in the long term, then that's at least a small advantage.
I think it's great when women's sport is promoted. That the players get the recognition and infrastructure they deserve.
Clubs like Viktoria give me the feeling that women's sport is important to them. They don't just do it for promotional reasons, but to promote the sport. I really like that. I also think it's very good that people like Ariane, who know a lot about women's sport, are running the club. It's also refreshing that the women's section is run by women. That's not often the case, but it's a nice change. It's refreshing to see other ways of thinking, also shaped by former professional experience. But I'm still a bit put off because this startup vibe in football is a bit strange for me.
But I'm generally a bit torn when it comes to investing in outdoor sports. There are always two sides to the coin. Maybe i am a little bit biased because of recent evolutions.
I played my entire youth at a higher level in the Stuttgart region. There were many good teams, but VfB Stuttgart was never interested in a women's team. We also noticed the club's condescension towards women's sport. Nevertheless, Württemberg was a strong region because it was small village clubs that promoted the sport. AKB, Leonie Maier, Maxi Rall, Kim Kulig, are just a few of the names that started out in such clubs. Many of the clubs that had an impact on my youth no longer exist. Many of them were to blame for their own disputes, but there are also clubs whose decades of work have been destroyed by the arrival of VFB. They've been picking up players from all the good teams now. It hurts to see that clubs who have done so much for the sport in the last decades are relegated because of some "traditional" men club who was dismissive all the time.
Clubs will always suffer when someone is investing. And investing is important for developing. But i would rather see a "investor club", that was founded with the aim of promoting women's sport succeed than a traditional one that has always been dismissive.
Jesus that was a long take, sorry.
No problem when it's longer, reading is an important skill and I love to read longer takes. 😉
I get your point that it feels unfair when clubs that always cared about women's football get relegated. On the other hand the big clubs can provide an infrastructure that the women's clubs or smaller clubs can't. Just look at Viktoria Berlin and how difficult it is for them even though big names are in charge and even though they were able to recruit good investors.
I think clubs like Viktoria put it to test whether becoming a competitive club in the Bundesliga is possible at all for small clubs without a men's team in the Bundesliga.
