Photo : Andreas Schlichter ( Getty )

In late December, German soccer club BV Cloppenburg handed the reins of their fifth-division men’s team to Imke Wübbenhorst, making her the first woman to coach a German men’s team at that high of a level. You could probably imagine some of the moronic questions Wübbenhorst has had to field in light of her new gig, though you probably wouldn’t have predicted the irreverence and hilarity with which she dispatched one such question.


Wübbenhorst, a former player herself, spent most of her playing career with Cloppenburg’s women’s team. At the start of the 2018-19 season, after a couple seasons as a player/assistant coach for them, Cloppenburg promoted her to manager of that second-division women’s team. So impressed by the 30-year-old’s performance in the women’s division, and with the men’s team struggling in the regional Oberliga’s relegation spots, Cloppenburg took a chance and bumped her over to the men’s side on Dec. 21 to try to keep the club up.

It’s been a long-standing goal for Wübbenhorst to get into the men’s game, and it was a long time coming. She told Welt that she’d applied for several jobs managing men’s teams in the past, only to be summarily rejected, oftentimes expressly because she is a woman. Fortunately, Cloppenburg’s leadership was only interested in hiring someone who could do the best job. “It was an easy decision to let go of gender in the evaluation process,” said board member Herbret Schröder. “We only looked at quality.”


Per an interview Wübbenhorst gave to BVC’s website, the players appear to have her back, but not everyone involved with the team was so progressive. Wübbenhorst told Welt one story of an assistant coach, a holdover from the previous manager’s team, who told her he wouldn’t pick up training cones for a woman. He’s gone now. Another person asked her whether she might wear a siren on her head so that, before she entered the locker room, the players would know to put some pants on. Wübbenhorst’s response was perfect: “Of course not. I am a pro. I pick [my team] on dick length.”

When she’s not dunking on dummies, Wübbenhorst is busy making sure last-place Cloppenburg fight their way out of the relegation places. She has some innovative strategies in mind to accomplish that goal, which include breaking down game film with the players, individualized exercise routines, and individual tactical training—none of which were aspects of her predecessor’s management. As she told Welt, “I work in a different way than most of them have known so far. They have never heard of video analysis.”

Wübbenhorst and Cloppenburg have an uphill battle ahead of them, as they currently sit six points from safety with only 12 games to go in the season. Still, with Wübbenhorst’s drive and the team’s support, anything could happen. And while I don’t know the length and girth of the Cloppenburg players’ dongs, I do know that Wübbenhorst alone has demonstrated more than enough big dick energy to satisfy everyone.

[Welt]