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Paris Saint-Germain's Ramona Bachmann celebrates a goal against Bayern Munich
Photo:
CHRISTOF STACHE / AFP
The 20th minute of the game is running.
Sydney Lohmann, 21, one of the greatest talents in Germany in central midfield, is fouled when trying to counter.
Lohmann, who underwent hip surgery in October and has only been part-time for Bayern Munich for three games, falls on this same hip.
She is led off the field in pain, but comes back shortly afterwards and then bangs out of her battered body for 100 more minutes.
It was like the alarm signal for a memorable Champions League evening, which inspired me like no football game in a long time.
And by that I mean a very long time.
The women of FC Bayern traveled to the Prinzenpark in Paris with ten field players.
Corona had thinned out the squad badly, there were two goalkeepers on the substitute bench and Julia Landensberger, 18, and Laura Gloning, 16, two youngsters with almost no Bundesliga experience.
The Munich team had lost the first leg of the quarter-finals 1-2, and the starting position in terms of personnel had made the role of favorites even more clearly in the direction of PSG.
Of course, one could say that there are such underdog fairy tales in football every week.
An inferior team – in the case of Bayern, this evening was mainly about physical inferiority, the two teams are at a similar level in terms of play – creates a tie with passion and a sense of togetherness.
That also had to do with the arrogance of the opponents.
But this evening was special.
From so many different perspectives.
Not to be underestimated is the starting point, my starting point: I sense an increasing alienation from modern football with all its exaggeration, its moral conflicts, its pomposity.
99 percent of these aspects can be found in football played by men.
If you didn't follow the game in Paris, the dramaturgy should be briefly described.
The Munich team started well, but then had to accept the 0:1 (17th minute).
The equalizer was prompt (19'), PSG looked impressed and after Lea Schüller's goal (54') it went into overtime.
Lohmann, Schüller and Lineth Beerensteyen only dragged themselves across the field, the convalescent trio would not have played at all or only for a few minutes under normal conditions.
Ramona Bachmann scored the decisive 2:2 equalizer for Paris (112th).
The lack of a happy ending made this football evening even better.
Who needs heroines?
This suffering, this cheering, this disappointment – that was football again, which I love.
But it wasn't just the sporting things that made me fall asleep with a happy smile.
There were rough duels, without exaggerations, without acting.
Referee Esther Staubli followed a generous but understandable line.
The few controversial scenes (Schueller touched the ball with his upper arm when she scored) were briefly checked by video assistant Fedayi Sen, without delay, with a very high intervention threshold.
What a blessing.
A reasonable framework
Above all, the scenery in Paris was embedded in a historic day that had started with 91,553 spectators at the first quarterfinals in Barcelona.
The world record at the Clásico was followed by a crowd of 27,262 fans in the Prinzenpark, many of them PSG ultras, who sang through 120 minutes and created an appropriate framework.
In Germany, football played by women has been struggling for this framework for years.
In the Bundesliga, the women of Munich, together with Wolfsburg the leaders of the league, regularly play in front of less than 1000 fans.
The national team is struggling with sporting setbacks, kick-off times at 4 p.m. and a lack of acceptance from the DFB.
It was just eleven years ago that the 2011 World Cup in Germany was supposed to be the locomotive for football.
Sold out stadiums, players with star potential, a team that has been successful for decades.
But the DFB, like many Bundesliga clubs that were still leaders in Europe at the time, fell into a suffocating sleep.
England, Spain, France - they all passed.
If FC Bayern does it wisely, yesterday was a new beginning to finally give this wonderful sport the recognition it deserves.
