It’s her sixth title in a row: in 2006, once again, the name of Germany’s Women’s Footballer of the Year is Birgit Prinz. At the age of 28 the German national team striker has played more internationals than Lothar Matthäus, scored more goals than Gerd Müller and won more titles than Franz Beckenbauer. She has been World Cup winner, top World Cup goalscorer, European champion four times and national champion nine times – and remains what she has always been: the quiet queen of soccer. Once a year, however, Birgit Prinz encounters the big brash world of football when she is honoured as the world’s best female player, which has been the case in the last three years. Then she meets Messrs. Ronaldinho and Shevchenko and, decidedly anti-glamorous in dress and appearance, accepts her trophies with a timid smile, before returning to real life – to her life in a village near Frankfurt am Main, to a part-time job as a physiotherapist, to the quiet role of the world’s best female player. In the meantime she is supported by a number of sponsors and makes a good living from football, although “certainly no enough to have no worries about the future”. Nevertheless, Birgit Prinz embodies the self-confidence of modern soccer women who no longer have to compare their abilities with those of the men – nor their salaries either.

This self-confidence has grown all the more, the more unattractive men’s football has become with its excessive emphasis on physical prowess and stifling defensive systems. All that is very much in contrast to the women’s game, which at the top level has now reached the pace of the men’s game in the 1970s – the most attractive soccer decade in terms of play. As the result, women’s football is today often more appealing to watch than men’s.

In July 2006, Birgit Prinz even received an offer to join David Beckham’s club. Real Madrid planned to establish a women’s team and sought to attract the very best in the sport – and yet she is so very different from the other stars. Birgit Prinz is a qualified physiotherapist, she went to the USA for two seasons to expand her horizons, she does charitable work for children in Afghanistan – and she does not constantly appear with new hairstyles and tattoos. “If I’m the centre of attention because of my performance on the football field, then I know how to handle that,” she says, “but I’m not particularly suited to playing the glamour girl.”

Christian Eichler