Anne Trabant-Haarbach

* 1 January 1949
Midfielder

Clubs as a player:
1970 Mainz 1817
1971–1974 TuS Wörrstadt
1974–1976 Bonner SC
1976–1983 SSG 09 Bergisch Gladbach

Club:
German League champions: 1974, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983
DFB Cup winners: 1981, 1982

National team:
8 matches, 0 goals

World Champion: 1981 (unofficial)

Whenever successes in women’s football were documented in the 1970s and 1980s, one name inevitably cropped up time and again: Anne Trabant-Haarbach. She won her first league title with TuS Wörrstadt in 1974, which was to be followed by seven more whilst she was a player-coach and a further three as a coach only. During her subsequent spells at Bonner SC and SSG Bergisch Gladbach, she served in a dual role as player-coach for many years. When the DFB decided to establish a women’s national team, she was involved in the planning process by those in charge.

No one had such a comprehensive understanding of the sport as she did. In the first international match in November 1982 in Koblenz against Switzerland, Anne Trabant-Haarbach then led the team onto the pitch as captain. She had already enjoyed international success prior to this and played a key role in one of the most extraordinary success stories in German women’s football. In 1981, under her leadership, SSG Bergisch-Gladbach won what was then the unofficial Women’s World Cup in Taiwan. The SSG played nine matches in the space of eleven days, remaining the only one of the 14 participating teams to go unbeaten and, in a complete surprise, securing the tournament victory ahead of national teams from countries with a far greater tradition in women’s football.

The German Football Hall of Fame was established on the initiative of the German Football Museum. In November 2018 and January 2019, leading sports journalists voted to select the inaugural men’s and women’s teams. The jury members were asked to nominate their choice of players and managers from German men’s and women’s football. Players who were eligible to play for German national teams and whose playing careers had ended at least five years previously were eligible for nomination. The HALL OF FAME honours the greatest legends of German football in one central location for the first time. It forms part of the permanent exhibition at the German Football Museum in Dortmund. Opened on 1 April 2019, it has become a permanent place of pilgrimage for all football fans. The jury decides annually on further inductees from men’s and women’s football.