The Bundesliga begins this Friday (8.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga, on Sat.1 and DAZN).

Which, men's or women's?

Even after a fascinating summer of women's football, fans and officials never dream of such a question.

Before the start of the sixtieth season of the men's Bundesliga, it is still natural to equate Bundesliga football with men's football.

Eintracht Frankfurt and FC Bayern kick off the male anniversary season.

The supporters are well aware that a newly crowned European Cup winner is playing against the German champions of the past ten years.

But do you also know that the women's teams of the two traditional clubs were third and second behind the German champions from Wolfsburg last season?

And that the women's Bundesliga doesn't start until autumn, on September 16, also with the game between Eintracht Frankfurt and Bayern Munich?

Hardly likely.

why?

That is the counter-question of those who undeterred cling to old role attributions.

ARD, for example, advertises its “Sportschau” with a slogan as if time had stood still when the Bundesliga was founded in the 1960s: “Wednesday: pony party with your daughter.

With you as a pony.

Look forward to Saturday.”

In order to leave the well-worn tracks on which German football and the league have been moving for generations, it obviously takes much more than an inspiring European Championship with the best German center forward since Miroslav Klose, the gorgeous Alexandra Popp.

Defensive reflexes and a deeply rooted disinterest in women's football with all its issues, from female football socialization to mothers in professional football, alongside the power of habit and patronage, have been formative forces within the Bundesliga for almost sixty years, and even longer in the German Football Association.

Beyond the friendly rhetoric owed to the zeitgeist, the majority of those responsible are hardly willing to shake the status quo of women's and men's football.

Change still has to be initiated from the outside.

From women's initiatives that call for women to participate appropriately in football power.

Or from sponsors who link investments to more gender equality and see a growth market in women's football.

Even since the ban on football for women was lifted, change has continued to come only through pressure, not through knowledge.

Even with the kick-off of the sixtieth season, the strongest desire is to reproduce the old conditions: that the Bundesliga, as the largest public event in the country, continues to create identity, as it has been doing for generations - but primarily for the male part of society.

Persistently ignored is the fact that the gates to the emotional and economic power of the Bundesliga are still firmly closed to women.

Exceptions prove the rule.

Ten years ago, only four Bundesliga clubs were willing to support their women's team enough to allow them to play in the Bundesliga.

German football only wants to be a sport for the whole family in front of the television or in the stands of men's football.

The number of clubs that have teams in both Bundesligas has at least doubled today.

Other countries are still ahead of the Germans.

Unlike the women's national team, a women's Bundesliga club is not a team that inspires the masses on its own and can acquire strength and independence with high ratings.

The women's Bundesliga depends on the drip from the men's Bundesliga, which is now replenishing the budgets of the women's teams.

In addition to the women, there is also an elephant on the sidelines in the Bundesliga this season.

Like all of European professional football, it will be massively torn from its operations and tradition with the World Cup from November 21st to December 18th.

The fans tend to shrug their shoulders, although the scandalous World Cup award to Qatar has become synonymous with the darker side of (men's) football, involving corruption, excess wages and aloofness.

One consequence of this is a Bundesliga break of around ten weeks in the middle of the season.

During this time, when the football world is looking at Qatar, three of the twelve first round matchdays of the women's Bundesliga take place.

After that, it will be on hold for almost two months until the beginning of February.

While men's football has long been back in full swing, the women's Bundesliga should find itself back where it has always been: in oblivion.