Former ÖFB captain Karina Weninger came to Otakring for trial training
© Christoph Holzinger
There is football in hundreds of parks in Vienna. The Käfig League wants to enlist top help to ensure more girls participate.
more than 200 football cages Available in Vienna. And they have one main goal: to be close. Most are located in the suburbs, many around schools or community buildings.
The idea: Children and youthBut adults should also find it as easy as possible to exercise and get together. Here you get to play football as a team, enjoy distraction and socialize. This or that Professional football player It is said to have been discovered in the park.
But there is something else the cages have in common: they are found almost exclusively in most of them children And the youth. Girl Often avoid places. But this must change now.
Training with Caritas Cage League
At least if then Cage league He goes. project Caritas, which has been around for a decade, aims to get children whose parents don’t have the time, money, information or interest to put them in a club to play football. On around 15 locations in Vienna Volunteer coaches get From 8 to 16 years Regularly for Training for an hour and a half.
Cage league
- 15 sites In Vienna
- never 1.5 hours/Training week
- Special training for girls In Laubepark (10th district) on Tuesday afternoon and in Rohrauer Park (15th district) on Wednesday afternoon
- Trained coaches And the coaches
- normal Championships
- common Stadium visits And other trips
- Holiday camps
Football with Karina Weninger
The day stands Karina Weininger In the cage. Doing some warm-up exercises with the ball with the girls at the gym today Richard Wagner Park He came to Otakring. Then we kick. “I didn’t know anything like this in Graz, or in my hometown of Thal anyway,” says Fenninger. People simply met there in the park. “In Vienna, of course, such facilities make perfect sense. For example also for children from socially disadvantaged families.
Because she mostly had the opportunity to do whatever she wanted when she was young (“that was always soccer”), she wants to “give back somewhat,” she says. Team player 127 timeswho has now ended her career Admiral of the German Women’s League He managed and served as a testimonial for Musharaka, a startup collaborating with Caritas.
Girls at the ball
“Of course there are a lot of girls in the park too,” he says. Martin Saboi, which runs the Cage League. “But they often have care responsibilities there,” such as having to take care of younger siblings. The teacher teaches that football is primarily a male-dominated sport. “In the cage, and even more so.” Especially in migrant families, families do not always support girls playing football.
➤ Background: The pilot project “Girls League” started in Vienna
But they must also capitalize on Cage League goals: “Of course talent can be discovered, but we don’t manage training as a team.” Instead, “social skills” should be taught – even to those children who, for various reasons, cannot join the club.
“First of all, we want to show them our welcome,” says Saboi. “With us they learn self-esteem and have a feeling of success when they learn something. They don’t have a lot of those in everyday life.” They also want to create a foundation of trust through the coach-player relationship. And listen to them.
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