Almuth Schult has two very special fans at the European Football Championship: her children. She is the only mother in the DFB squad, but the mothers could even put up their own team at the tournament, there are so many now. The women take it upon themselves to do quite a bit.
Almuth Schult is one of the most famous German soccer players. As a TV expert on ARD, she gained many fans during the men’s European Football Championship last year. She won the championship five times with VfL Wolfsburg, the DFB Cup seven times and also won the Champions League. She has already played 64 games as a goalkeeper for the German national soccer team. She was there when she won the last European Championship title in 2013, she is an Olympic champion. For years she was the undisputed number one. At the upcoming European Championships in England (July 6th to 31st) she will only sit on the bench. Not because she got worse or because she made too many mistakes. The catch: she became a mother.
Twins have enriched Schult’s life since April 2020. She didn’t think about giving up her job – unlike many before her. Top players have been lost to the DFB in recent years: Fatmire Alushi was pregnant for the first time in 2015 and now has four children. Celia Sasic ended her career just a few months after her teammate to have more time for her private life, gave birth to her first daughter in 2016. As an ambassador for the EM 2024 and as Vice President for Diversity and Diversity, who was elected in March, she will remain with the DFB in another function.
But active football is no longer her job. Schult wanted to do things differently. And first had to create opportunities for many things. “The club didn’t know the circumstances that a mother was there; how it is with maternity leave, how to get back into competitive sports after a pregnancy,” she told the “taz”. Appointments also have to be planned very precisely, she can’t just take a day off for a pediatrician’s appointment. Everyday life is difficult to organize anyway. “In a tournament year we are away for about 100 days with the national team alone. If there are also away games from the club, it is a long time that you are on the road for the sport,” she explained in the “taz” interview. “That might put you off, but I want to show that it works.”
And how it works. She kept fit, on the day of the birth she did push-ups, she said in the SWR format “
Just not in the national team. She hasn’t played a DFB game since the 2019 World Cup, first surgery, then baby break, then Corona. Merle Frohms is set by national coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg. “Merle Frohms has been our number one for three years, so nothing will change in this status,” said Voss-Tecklenburg when nominating for the European Championship: “Merle has performed very well to outstandingly for three years.” Because of her failure during pregnancy, Schult fell behind: Of course it hurts me that that’s the reason now, but in sport not everything can always be planned,” she said. “I would have loved to play. It would also have been something special to play an international match again as a mom, because that was always the big goal.”
Maybe it will succeed at some point, then maybe together with Melanie Leupolz. The 28-year-old, 75-time international, is currently pregnant, and her club said they were looking forward to “welcoming Melanie back to us after her maternity leave”. She has not announced the end of her career, on Instagram she shows how she keeps fit.
The two Germans can take some competitors at the European Championships as role models. There are five mothers in the Iceland team. The best-known is Sara Bjork Gunnarsdottir, the record national player, who played for VfL Wolfsburg between 2016 and 2020, then switched to Olympique Lyon, recently won the Champions League and will play for Juventus Turin from next season. On November 16, 2021, she gave birth to their son Ragnar, only four months later she played for Lyon again. “When you have role models who play at a good level, have a child and come back even though they’re still in the national team, that has meant a lot for me,” she told the BBC. Of course, this is not possible without immense effort. “I had my doubts,” Gunnarsdottir admits to the BBC. “I was pregnant for the first time and didn’t know my body that well. I’ve torn my cruciate ligament and suffered other injuries, so you know the steps and you know how you’re going to feel, but when you’re pregnant you don’t know how body will react.” She played 45 minutes in her comeback away in Ligue 1 Feminine against Dijon in March. “I remember saying to myself in the middle of the game, ‘It feels so good’.”
But her life became more difficult after the birth. Her husband, Arni Vilhjalmsson, is also a professional soccer player, due to different clubs in different places in France, they don’t see each other every day. Physical and mental exhaustion, at the same time happiness and pride to be a footballer and mother, are an “emotional roller coaster ride”.
His son Ragnar is present at the European Championships – the association also pays for an accompanying person. But only because her son is not yet a year old is he allowed to accompany her. However, Gunnarsdottir’s teammates have older children who are not allowed to attend the camp. “To be honest I’m a bit stressed about the European Championships because we’ll be away for a while,” Dagny Brynjarsdottir told the BBC. She gave birth to her son in 2018. “I feel like we’re both still very attached. It’s hard when I know my son wants to be with me and can’t.”
The associations regulate differently how the mothers are treated. The Belgian Lenie Onzia, the Dutch Sherida Spitse and Stefanie van der Gragt and the English Demi Stokes are allowed to see their children on family days, the Swedes Lina Hurtig, Hedvig Lindahl and Elin Rubensson can see their children in their free time because the association allows that Relatives follow the team. Schult has her children and her husband with her in England, and team manager Maika Fischer assured at the beginning of last year that a “flat rate for childcare” would be paid. “Today we have completely different ways of supporting mothers in the national team,” said national coach Voss-Tecklenburg back in 2020. She knows exactly what she’s talking about, as she herself is one of the very few who does the balancing act between being a mother and soccer player took on. In 1995 she became Vice World Champion and European Champion, but she wasn’t allowed to take her daughter to the courses at the time. That was “distressing”.
The mothers would get more than an eleven at the EM. There are more than ever before – and yet still few. In 2017, football union Fifpro found that only two percent of players are mothers. And that almost half of the players retire early to have children. Guidelines for support were missing. That has now changed, according to FIFA, since last year there must be maternity leave, 14 weeks must be paid with at least two-thirds of the salary. There must also be the right to return after pregnancy and access to independent medical advice. “We want women to be able to be professional footballers but at the same time have families,” said Sarai Bareman, FIFA Women’s Football Officer. It’s still just a beginning. Almuth Schult and Co., however, contribute to the fact that mothers as footballers become more normal.
