LONDON, 10 Jul. (dpa/EP) –
The director of national teams of the German Football Federation (DFB), Joti Chatzialexiou, considers that Spain, Germany’s next rival in the European Championship in England, will be the future dominating power of women’s football.
“I think that in the future Spanish football will be dominant in the women’s arena,” the 46-year-old coach said before Germany’s match against the Spanish on Tuesday at Community Stadium in Brentford.
For him, the Spanish women are “models of conduct in their form of training”. Chatzialexiou said he had seen many performance centers in Spain, especially in the men’s arena. “It’s a different mindset, a different attitude,” he noted.
In women’s football, with few exceptions, the Spanish teams from lower categories have always reached the semifinals in international tournaments in recent years, according to the German coach.
However, in the absolute category they have not yet won any European or world title and have never played in an Olympic Games. His greatest success was the semi-finals of the 1997 European Championship and the round of 16 of the 2019 World Cup.
FC Barcelona, which makes up the bulk of the Spanish team, is considered the leader in club football at the women’s level, despite the fact that the Barça team, winners of the Champions League in 2021, lost this year’s final against the Olympian Lyon.
Spain won its first match of the European Championship against Finland 4-1, but with the absence for the entire tournament of the proclaimed best player in the world, Alexia Putellas, who tore her cruciate ligament in training last Tuesday.