Which play will you perform in the coming years?

The story of a brave nest of resistance inspired by the Gauls Asterix and Obelix?

Or rather "die hard" in Brandenburg style?

Turbine Potsdam has been a formative force in German women's football since the Bundesliga was founded.

Six championship titles, three cup wins, two European Cup triumphs speak of a history rich in silverware.

Therefore history, because the last title was already ten years ago and many believe that there will be no more in the long term. In the Bundesliga there are currently only three, and in the coming season only two out of twelve participants are expected to be purely women's football clubs. The Potsdam women are persistently in the extended top, as the placements of the last seasons - four, four, three, four - prove. This Saturday (2 p.m. at MagentaSport), the team will start from fifth place with a catch-up game against VfL Wolfsburg.

"It is not automatic that the women's football clubs are condemned to relegation and disappear," says President Rolf Kutzmutz.

The 74-year-old can look back on many years as an SED functionary, two years working for the Stasi, eight years in the Bundestag (Die Linke) and 21 years of responsibility at Turbine.

Kutzmutz stands for one thing: it should stay the way it is.

And: should the others change, we remain steadfast.

keeping up with the competition

In German women's football, it is often said that marketing and professionalization are not progressing fast enough. However, a development has started on a fairly broad level that licensed clubs invest in their women's football departments or cross-subsidize them. Bayern Munich and VfL Wolfsburg have been at the league for years, followed by up-and-coming TSG Hoffenheim and Eintracht Frankfurt, which has incorporated long-time Turbine rivals 1. FFC Frankfurt.

The Frankfurters say that there was no alternative to the step because it was essential for survival in competition with the competition.

The Potsdam say: "We have a future as a pure women's football club.

We can be a training club and a top club at the same time,” says Kutzmutz.

Head coach Sofian Chahed - socialized as a former professional at Hertha BSC and Hannover 96 and coach of Hertha junior teams in men's football - is more skeptical.

Players migrate

"If the licensing clubs get serious, we must not miss the moment to find ways and means to follow the steps.

Then we need more money to stay competitive,” says the 38-year-old.

Salaries in women's football are a fraction of those of their male counterparts.

Against this background, according to Chahed, it makes a big difference for players if they can earn 1,500 or 5,000 euros.

Turbine hasn't been able to keep its best players for a while because they can get double and triple the Turbine rate elsewhere.

President Kutzmutz refers to the neighboring sports school at every opportunity as "our be-all and end-all and bargaining chip".

However, the stream of talented youngsters trained in the immediate vicinity of the club, who reliably supplied Turbine and the national team, has ebbed.

Especially since in the area RB Leipzig is also being upgraded enormously in the youth sector and for the second division team.

There are only four players with roots in the sports school left in the current Turbine roster, and Chahed doesn't see anyone who could make the leap in the next year or two.

The long-time Potsdam player and former national player Tabea Kemme competed against Kutzmutz in the last year of the 50th anniversary to become the first president of a women's first division club. And, as she said, to improve site conditions and advance professionalization. She failed in her attempt. Recently, Kutzmutz had to think long and hard about whether the budget would allow for a physiotherapist position.

In this country, women's football is a subsidy business for the license clubs and a tight calculation for the people of Potsdam.

The top division clubs only get paid 68,000 euros a year in television money.

Thanks to its sponsors, Turbine has a budget of 1.7 million euros for the entire club, according to Kutzmutz.

The Brandenburg women will probably be the last Mohicans in an intensified competition in the future.

There has been a cooperation with Hertha BSC for an initial period of three years since summer 2020, which still does not have its own women's division.

But this does not go beyond sporadic contacts, some money, help with medical care and social media activities as well as the irregular sending of the Hertha mascot to Turbine home games.

Will Turbine one day follow and merge with Hertha, which is only twelve kilometers away?

"No," says Kutzmutz resolutely.

“We will keep our name and our independence.

And no girl from the age of six who wants to play football with us will be rejected.”