Goal queen Defterli: Girls play better football than most male Counterparts

Bilgin Defterli has earned the title of goal queen twice in Turkey’s first division and once in Germany’s third. She came to the Turkish women’s football scene in 1996, when the league was only three years old. She played for six years for Dinarsu, which had been the reigning champion of the league since 1993, but Defterli suffered a lot professionally from Turkey’s inexperience in women’s football.

Luckily for Defterli, who is currently wearing the jersey of FC Köln in Germany, her parents always supported her and never discouraged her even when people warned them to stop her from playing the game.

“I started playing football with boys on the street. People did not see it as good when a girl played football. I suffered a lot from that. People talked to my parents about me [playing football],” she told Sunday’s Zaman.

The player’s mother is her greatest fan. She follows her daughter at every opportunity and frequently visits her in Germany. “I call my mother before every match and ask for her prayers. If I do not get her blessings, I feel incomplete, and believe me, we do not get good results when she does not pray before the games.”

She did not receive encouraging comments from men, either. Defterli says men are prejudiced about women’s ability to play the sport. “When I first started playing football, our team used to play on a turf pitch. Men’s teams used to come to the field with their players yelling at us: ‘Can women be footballers? Go home, wash dishes, do laundry.’ When they saw us, they were saying that we couldn’t beat them on the field.”

The passionate footballer stated that after proving herself successful in the game nationally and internationally, she is now winning the admiration of the people who used to object to her playing the game.

The 29-year-old player, current captain of the Turkish women’s national football team, also believes in herself and her talent, and contrary to general belief, she says women players are better than most male players in football.

“I still highlight that most men do not know how to play ball [football], really. They tell me to quit. I won’t! I will quit when they learn. Why should I quit playing a sport that I am very good at? Most [male] footballer friends of mine say that I can’t do some football moves that they do. How do they know? Women can do many moves that most men cannot.”

The young player’s career is full of successes. Having been involved in athletics before committing herself to football, Defterli was called to the national team two years after she started playing the game professionally. She also experienced a number of championships in the Turkish league before it took a break in 2003. When the future did not look bright in her homeland, she sent her CV to German teams, and after waiting for one year, FSV Frankfurt invited her to Germany to participate in their training sessions. Although she was a player on the Turkish national team, she was still classed as an amateur, which put her off taking her place in the German team. While Germany gives professional licenses to its national team players, Turkish officially saw their national team players as amateurs back then.

“I signed a deal with the club, but I had to wait for six months. While the club was saying, ‘I want this player,’ the federation said: ‘There are many professional players out there. Why are you insisting on an amateur one?’ Such problems occurred between the club and the federation. They eventually accepted me playing at Frankfurt.”

Defterli scouting talented girls in Europe

As a Turkish Football Federation (TFF) official told her, she is one of the only two Turkish-born players who have played in European leagues for several years. In an attempt to speed up the development of women’s football in Turkey, the TFF has initiated several projects, including football villages for young and talented girls to play the game and a scouting system to improve the Turkish national women’s team.

Defterli is successfully scouting young talented women football players in Europe. The Turkish team that beat Malta 5-1 in Trabzon in a 2011 Women’s World Cup qualifying group match included two players from German teams in addition to Defterli, and both of them were there because Defterli had spotted them.

‘You can’t even compare Turkish football with German football’

While acknowledging that women’s football has improved lately through the federation’s initiatives, Defterli said women’s football in Turkey undoubtedly falls behind that of Germany and many other countries.

While the Turkey-Malta match was followed by about 200 fans at a Turkish stadium, a similar match would attract thousands in Germany, she said. “Stadiums are filled with supporters in German women’s national football matches. Our team upgraded to the second division this year. Our stadium has a capacity of 3,000 fans, and it is full at every game.”

“They learn about our games when flyers are distributed, and our photos are shown on the scoreboard during men’s matches. They publish our photos in daily and weekly magazines and announce the dates of our games in Germany. In Germany, the football federation system is far different from that in Turkey.”

She also stressed that more women coaches must be trained and the women’s league must be promoted more, as it is in Germany, if Turkey wants to improve its women’s football.