Starting a Girls' Football Team: How to Build a Girls' Section in Your Amateur Club

Maybe the board told you last week that the club finally needs a girls' section. Maybe you are a former player and you have been asked to build a U13 girls' team at your home club. Or perhaps you coach a mixed E-youth team and are wondering whether the three girls currently playing might be better off in their own team. Either way, you face the same question: how do you start a girls' football team, or soccer team as it's called in North America, in an amateur club without losing track of everything?

This article guides you through the first six months, drawing on the DFB membership statistics 2024/25, the Belgian RBFA association study on women's football, the Club Standards Framework from Football NSW (Australia), and sports-science reviews on girls' training. You will get a roadmap, a list of hurdles, a 12-point self-audit, and concrete pointers on where the association and the DFB actually provide money and equipment.

Why now is the right time

The DFB crossed the eight-million-member mark for the first time in its 125-year history in its 2024/25 membership statistics, with growth of 3.86 percent compared to the previous year. The strongest increase comes from the girls' sector: plus nine percent in memberships for girls up to 16 years old. Registered girls' teams grew by ten percent, and first-time registrations for G- to C-junior girls even by 15.3 percent. Close to 119,000 girls under 16 were actively playing.

The international picture confirms this. The UEFA Women's EURO 2022 reached 365 million viewers worldwide, up 215 percent from 2017. The English Women's Super League grew at an average of 45 percent per year to exceed one million viewers per season for the first time. UEFA projects a sixfold increase in the commercial value of European women's football by 2033.

For your club, this means two things. First: demand is there, you do not need to invent it. Girls who want to play football, or soccer, exist in almost every primary school class. Second: regional associations and the DFB have written girls' football promotion into their strategic priorities and since 2023 have provided significantly more programmes, contact persons, and equipment grants. Starting now means benefiting from an association that is actively looking for clubs it can help.

Three ways a girls' team comes into being

Path 1: Board mandate. The classic route. The board wants to secure membership numbers, expand sponsorship options, or redeem a funding commitment from the regional association, and delegates the project to the youth coordinator or an experienced youth coach. Advantage: backing, budget, pitch time. Disadvantage: the operational person often feels out of their depth because girls' football has not been part of their day-to-day coaching life.

Path 2: Personal initiative. A former player, a football-experienced mother, or a young coach steps in with energy but has little club-political backing. Here someone knows the football side but struggles with board communication, training time allocation, and the equipment budget. In Belgium, one in three to nearly one in two families feel their club prioritises boys' football: in Flanders 36.7 percent, in Wallonia 45.7 percent. An engaged individual feels this structural imbalance very quickly.

Path 3: Organic growth. An existing boys' team has two, three, or four girls who have been playing together for years. With puberty comes the question of whether the girls should continue training with the boys or whether it is time for their own team. This route looks easiest at first glance because players are already there, but it involves the most delicate parent communication: taking girls out of the boys' team is often perceived as a demotion, not a step forward.

In practice these three paths often mix. Do not let the fact that you are wearing several hats at once hold you back.

Before you start: three hard prerequisites

1. Board resolution, in writing. Verbal commitments do not hold up at the first conflict over pitch allocation. Have the board record in the minutes that a girls' team is being founded, in which age group, with what budget for balls, bibs, and referee costs, and with which training slot. The Football NSW framework calls this the League Compliance Minimum with registered coaches and a documented game-time policy. In Germany this is more informal, but the principle is the same: anything not in the minutes gets cut at the first bottleneck.

2. One responsible person, named. Not "youth coordination", not "the sporting director", but first and last name. Without named responsibility the project diffuses. Both the Belgian RBFA study and the French FFF model, which more than doubled the number of players in five years (from 58,350 to 142,037), name a girls' football lead within the club as a necessary condition. This person does not need to be a coach. They need to be reachable, able to make decisions, and the point of contact for parents and the association.

3. A reliable training slot. At least 75 minutes, ideally twice a week. Not "we will see if we can find something on Friday between 5 and 6 pm." Girls lose interest quickly when sessions are cancelled or moved at short notice. Football NSW recommends three sessions per week of 75 to 90 minutes each and a 40-week season for its Junior Development League. That is unrealistic for amateur clubs, but two sessions a week is very achievable. If only one session is possible, make that one sacred.

Finding players: getting the first twelve together

The RBFA study names "too few participants per age group" as the most commonly cited reason clubs give for not having girls' football. At the same time, the DFB demographic survey found back in 2002 that six in ten girls wanted to play football. The gap is not a demand problem; it is a channel problem.

Source 1: Primary and secondary schools in your catchment area. An email to the PE teachers offering a taster session often does the job. Combined with a DFB Girls Football Day (250+ DFB districts name this as the most effective recruitment tool for new players), you can get 20 to 40 girls on the pitch within two weeks, of whom typically 8 to 15 will start playing regularly.

Source 2: Sisters of existing players. Go through your club's youth teams. Every fourth player has a sister in the right age range. Direct outreach to parents ("We now have something for girls too, bring her along next week") converts far better than a notice board.

Source 3: Other sports at the club or in the area. Girls from gymnastics clubs, riding clubs, or swimming clubs who reduce their main sport during puberty are an underestimated target group. Ask the coaches directly whether there are girls who "would actually like to try football sometime."

Source 4: The club's social media, locally targeted. A post with a concrete date ("Taster session for girls aged 9 to 12, Saturday 11am, free") on the club's pages plus sharing in the parents' WhatsApp groups of local primary schools reaches more girls than three months of handing out flyers.

Plan for double the sign-up count during the taster phase. If you want 12 players long-term, invite 24. If you only invite 12, you will end up with 6.

Finding a coach or taking it on yourself

The shortage of female coaches is real. France increased the number of female coaches by 501 percent in five years, which hints at the underlying gap. In German amateur clubs, the chances are high that you will not find a female coach to start with. That is no reason not to begin.

What you do instead:

Take it on yourself and adapt your behaviour. Several studies on the coach-player relationship in female youth football point to three adjustments that make a real difference in practice: less authoritative tone, more individual feedback, more questions instead of instructions. This does not mean lower standards or less discipline. It means that "Run!" works less well in a girls' team than "Where could you run now to be available for a pass?" The content stays the same; the language does not.

Actively seek female coaches in parallel with training. Former players in the region (regional association databases often have lists), sports science students, mothers with a football background. Approach them even if they initially decline. By the second or third try, the connection sticks.

C-licence with a girls' football focus. Since 2023 the DFB and regional associations have offered coaching courses with an explicit girls' focus, often as a compact weekend course. If you are coaching yourself, do this course in the first year. If someone else is coaching, send them with club funding.

Develop co-coaches from within your own squad. The oldest players in the first girls' team are the natural co-coaches for the next age group two years later. Plan this as a pipeline from the start.

Mixed or own team: the transition question

The DFB Youth Regulations permit mixed play of boys and girls up to U17. In the new children's football reform for G-, F-, and E-youth, mixed play is even explicitly encouraged and structurally supported through the festival format (see also the article on new game formats in children's football).

More interesting is the question of when a dedicated girls' team starts to make sense. The RBFA study asked players directly:

• 82 to 83 percent of girls not yet in a club say they would prefer a girls-only team.
• At the same time, 77 percent of girls already playing in mixed teams want to stay in exactly that setting.

The naive reading is that girls want either one or the other. The correct reading is: girls who have not yet started find entering a girls-only team easier. Girls who are already settled in a mixed team feel comfortable there and do not want to be pulled out.

For your club this means: offer both where possible. A dedicated girls' team as the entry point, alongside the option for individual players to stay in the mixed boys' team. In practice this works from E-youth onwards, because training frequency still allows both teams to warm up together and only separate for the playing formats.

By U14/U15 at the latest, however, the transition becomes physically clearer: the different growth spurts create a physical gap between boys and girls that makes mixed play injury-relevant. So plan the move to a dedicated team not only when it is physically unavoidable, but already at U12/U13 as a calm transition.

The five most common hurdles in the first months

Hurdle 1: Pitch allocation. The girls' team gets the least favourable slot, far from the clubhouse or at times parents cannot make it. Countermeasure: cite the board resolution, escalate at the youth committee, or swap slots with another youth team. If nothing works, communicate the slot offensively and positively ("We train early, so you still have the rest of the day") rather than defensively.

Hurdle 2: No local role models. Girls who do not know another player in their immediate environment are less likely to start. The Belgian RBFA study shows this clearly: in Wallonia, fewer than one in two active players had any female football idol at all. Countermeasure: use professionals from the Women's Bundesliga or the national team as an external visibility source, but above all invite a player from the nearest women's district league team to a taster session. 90 minutes of effort, big impact, because the role model is suddenly within reach.

Hurdle 3: Parents with reservations. "Football is really for boys", "she will hurt herself", "does it look good later for a career?" These reservations are real, even in 2026. Countermeasure: parents' evening with a clear message. Women's Bundesliga professionals often come from amateur clubs; girls' football is a DFB strategic priority; injury risk is reducible with knee control programmes. Keep the evening short and factual.

Hurdle 4: Dropout during puberty. Between 14 and 16, many girls stop their sport. The RBFA study ranked the reasons: time pressure leads clearly, injuries follow, the feeling of not being welcome is significantly less frequent than it feels, but is the only one of the three that can be directly addressed by the club.

Countermeasure: do not increase training frequency when players turn 14; prioritise the social side (shared meal after matches, one team trip per season); set substitution rules so that weaker players also get adequate playing time.

Hurdle 5: Not feeling welcome. Girls who have to change in a shared changing room with no fixed spot, who pick up old club comments from the men's section, or who only see photos of the first men's team in the clubhouse sense the missing signal: this is not home for them. Countermeasure: a permanently assigned changing room with its own door sign, a visible female coach or female team manager in club life, a team photo of the girls displayed prominently in the clubhouse. Small investments that build a sense of belonging faster than any extra training session.

Girls' training is not boys' training with a ponytail

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). Girls and women have a two to sixfold higher risk of ACL injuries compared to male players of the same age group. Structured warm-up programmes such as FIFA 11+ or the Swedish Knee Control reduce the risk by up to 50 percent. Concretely: 10 minutes of Knee Control warm-up before every session, not as a replacement for other warm-up but as an integral part of it.

Plyometrics and growth plates. Drop jumps from high boxes should be used cautiously during adolescence (roughly U11 to U14) because they carry the risk of early closure of the growth plates. Use low-impact variants: bilateral jumps with ground contact, mini-hurdles up to 20 cm, single-leg landings on soft surfaces. Classic plyo sets are appropriate again only after the peak height velocity phase (approximately U15 to U17).

Recovery between matches. U13 and U15 players need longer to recover after matches: creatine kinase and muscle soreness (DOMS) remain elevated for up to 168 hours. U17 regenerates faster. Two matches in one week are too many for U13/U15; one match plus one training session is the maximum. Plan hall tournaments at weekends so that the following week is a recovery week.

Menstrual cycle. Research in this area is still evolving; clear training-plan adjustments based on cycle phase do not yet exist at youth level. What has proven useful in practice: give the topic space, allow players to say without taboo when they cannot go full out on a given day. A female coach on the coaching team makes this significantly easier, but as mentioned above, is not a mandatory starting point.

Nutrition and hydration. Many young players arrive at matches dehydrated and with nutritional gaps, particularly around iron. This is not a primary coaching topic in club life, but it belongs in the parents' evening.

First match day: taster tournament instead of league

When your team has been training together for three to four months and at least 8 players are coming reliably, organise a taster tournament. Not an official association girls' tournament, but your own small one with teams from the immediate area.

A good format for the first twelve to fifteen months: 5 to 7 teams, 5-v-5 on a small pitch, three hours of hall or pitch time, every team against every other. The practical schedule for 5, 7, or 10 teams covers exactly this format, including break times and substitution rules. This is not a casual cross-reference: a girls' taster tournament follows the same organisational logic as a mixed mini-tournament, just with different marketing.

Send the invitation to the girls' football leads at neighbouring clubs, to the district contact for girls' football, and to the PE teachers at primary schools in your catchment area. The latter will bring girls who are not yet in a club, which simultaneously seeds your next recruitment wave.

Anyone who does not want to drown in spreadsheets can use AreaCopa. The fair-play mode, match times, and break times can be set up in 15 minutes instead of shuffling them around by hand.

More important than the sporting result is that the tournament gets external visibility. A few photos on the club website, a short report in the local paper, a video clip for Instagram. This is marketing for next season, not vanity.

What the association and the DFB actually offer

Dedicated contact person for women's and girls' football. Every regional association has one, often with an additional district representative. This is the first person you call after the board resolution. They know current funding programmes, pilot projects, and equipment grants that do not all appear on the website. An email is enough; most contact persons respond within a week.

Girls Football Day. The DFB action day takes place once a year, usually in spring, and is one of the highest-reach recruitment events in German girls' football. 250+ DFB districts participate. Register your club, receive the materials package (balls, bibs, promotional material), and use the day as the visible kick-off for your girls' team.

Equipment funding. Many regional associations subsidise the kit for new girls' teams each season with a fixed amount or a package (training bibs, balls in the right size, first-aid kit). Applications are usually informal. Ask your regional association contact person.

Coaching education with a girls' focus. Since 2023 many regional associations have offered a C-licence variant with an explicit girls' and women's football focus. Often as a compact weekend, often combinable with a club subsidy. The DFB-Mobil service also comes to the club and provides free training sessions, particularly effective in the early phase as a form of coach development.

Club minimum standards: 12-point self-audit

Organisation and structure

1. Written board resolution to establish a girls' team (with budget and resources).
2. A named girls' football lead within the club.
3. A club-adapted game-time policy: every player gets at least 50 percent playing time per match (at least during the development phase).

Training and match operations

4. At least one, ideally two fixed training sessions per week of at least 75 minutes each.
5. Own changing room or clearly assigned locker room.
6. Own equipment (balls in girls' sizes, own bibs with club branding).

Coaching and qualifications

7. At least one qualified coach (minimum DFB basic licence) on the coaching team.
8. A plan for recruiting or training a female coach within 24 months.
9. Knee Control programme (FIFA 11+) in warm-up, at minimum every other session.

Safety and wellbeing

10. Extended background check for all coaches and assistants, documented in writing.
11. At least one club safeguarding contact person to whom players can turn in case of conflicts, named on the club website.

Visibility and growth

12. At least one visible external action per season (taster tournament, Girls Football Day, or school partnership).

Print out this list, go through it with the board, and mark each point green, yellow, or red. The red points are your task list for the next six months.

Roadmap for the first six months

Month 1: Foundation

• Week 1: Discuss board resolution, name a responsible person, fix the training slot.
• Week 2: Contact the regional association contact person, apply for equipment funding, start looking for a female coach.
• Week 3: Write to schools in the catchment area, set a date for the taster session (4-6 weeks in advance).
• Week 4: Check internally for sisters of existing players, write to parents' WhatsApp groups.

Month 2: Recruitment and first training

• Weeks 5-6: Social media posts, club website entry, inform local newspaper.
• Week 7: First taster session (1-2 dates one week apart).
• Week 8: Collect firm registrations, regular training begins.

Month 3: Stabilisation

• Regular training, training plan with Knee Control warm-up, own balls and bibs organised.
• First club friendlies against neighbouring clubs, short distances.
• Coaching course booked (C-licence with girls' focus).

Month 4: Identity

• Team photo for the club website and clubhouse wall.
• Establish team routines: greeting ritual, farewell ritual, one shared evening per month.
• Parents' meeting, clarity on car-sharing and equipment.

Month 5: Taster tournament planning

• Draw up the schedule for 5-7 teams, invite neighbouring clubs, reserve hall or pitch time.
• Distribute tasks: who handles catering, referee supervision, photos.

Month 6: External visibility

• Run the taster tournament.
• Report in the local press, social media review, list of interested new players.
• Go through the 12-point audit again, to-do list for the second half of the season.

After six months you have a working girls' team, a recruitment network, and a first handful of potential players for the second season.

Checklist download

The 6-month roadmap and the 12-point club audit from this article as a printable PDF. Go through the points with the board and co-coaches and mark them red, yellow, green; the red ones are your task list for the next six months.

Sources

All figures, percentages, and frameworks in this article come from the following sources:

1. German Football Association (July 2025). DFB Membership Statistics 2024/25. Source for the growth figures in German girls' football: more than 8 million memberships for the first time (plus 3.86 percent), plus 9 percent girls' memberships up to age 16, plus 10 percent registered girls' teams, plus 15.3 percent first-time registrations for G- to C-junior girls, nearly 119,000 active players under 16.
2. Visa / UEFA (2024). The Compound Effect in Women's Football. Study on the commercial and sporting development of European women's football. Source for the UEFA Women's EURO 2022 reaching 365 million viewers (plus 215 percent vs. 2017), the Women's Super League CAGR of 45 percent, the FIFA World Cup 2023 with two billion cumulative reach, and UEFA's projection of a sixfold increase in commercial value by 2033.
3. Royal Belgian Football Association (2020). RBFA Study 3 on Women's Football. Association study with surveys of clubs, playing girls, non-playing girls, and parents in Belgium. Source for: 36.7 percent (Flanders) and 45.7 percent (Wallonia) of parents feel the club prioritises boys' football; 82 to 83 percent of non-playing girls prefer girls-only teams; 77 percent of girls in mixed teams want to stay there; dropout reasons time pressure (37.95 percent / 29.17 percent), injuries, not feeling welcome (13.25 percent / 12.5 percent); role model gap (49.2 percent in Wallonia). Also contains FFF data (France 2011-2016: players 58,350 to 142,037, female coaches plus 501 percent).
4. Football New South Wales (2025). Club Standards and Benchmarking Framework 2025-26. Australian club standards model with five pillars (League Compliance, Club Championship, Football Criteria, Technical Qualifications, Progression and Retention). Basis for the 12-point self-audit in section 11.
5. Adams, T.G. (August 2025). Physical Characteristics of Youth Female Football Training. Master of Science (by Dissertation), Department of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences, University of Essex. Source for sports-science findings on injury risk, maturation, and recovery: U13 and U15 players show elevated creatine kinase and DOMS still 168 hours after matches, while U17 is fully recovered; plyometrics and growth plate risk in adolescence; dehydration and nutritional gaps in adolescent players.
6. Vandermey, A. (2017). "It's so much better playing with all girls": Examining gender politics within a women-only association football club in Melbourne. Master of Arts Thesis. Qualitative source for dropout dynamics during puberty and the self-efficacy argument for girls-only spaces.
7. German Football Association (as of 15 July 2024). Youth Regulations, Appendix IV: Provisions for small-sided matches for junior girls and boys. Source for girls' eligibility to play in boys' teams up to U17.
8. FIFA / F-MARC and the Swedish Football Association SVFF. FIFA 11+ and Knäkontroll (Knee Control). Structured warm-up programmes for preventing anterior cruciate ligament injuries. Studies show a reduction in knee injuries of up to 50 percent with systematic application.
9. DFB initiative Girls Football Day. Nationwide action day in which 250+ DFB districts participate; materials package and promotional materials are provided by the DFB. Described in the RBFA study as the most effective recruitment tool for new girl players.

Current programmes, funding conditions, and regional contact persons can be found on your regional association website and at dfb.de.