It was touching words that Viktoria Schnaderbeck addressed to the audience. “Today is not an easy day, it’s an emotional day,” she said at a press conference on Wednesday while visibly fighting back tears. The decision had matured in her for a long time and ultimately she decided to end her career. “My gut just told me it was the right time. I always wanted to walk independently.”
Schnaderbeck shaped Austrian football like no other. As the only girl among boys, she started at TSV Kirchberg/Raab at the age of seven. Before that, she had mainly trained with her brother in the garden, “until Mom eventually called us in to eat”.
At the age of just 16, she then went to the second team of FC Bayern Munich – a time that was characterized by homesickness and the first major injury. “I was already threatened with the end of my career when I was 17,” she says in retrospect. At the same time, she learned at that moment: “Nothing can be taken for granted. So take every moment football gives you.”
And Schnaderbeck took every sporting moment as a gift – her debut with the national team in 2007, her first appearance as captain, the multiple German championship titles with FC Bayern Munich and finally the championship with Arsenal.
She became more and more experienced in dealing with injuries, operations and rehabilitation. She had to undergo a total of eight knee operations, even at the European Championship in England, “the highest stage that European women’s football has experienced so far”, she still had to tremble.
Nevertheless, she came back every time – and always went beyond her own physical limits. This also became clear when she said goodbye at the age of 32, when she not only spoke about physical challenges, but also added that mentally there were many days when she “had little energy because the injuries took a lot of strength”.
In the course of her career, Schnaderbeck has made it far from the Berndorfer Garten to the European Championships in England, but has never lost sight of her roots. This became particularly clear when she returned to her homeland in 2019 while she was at Arsenal and came out as homosexual because she felt safe and secure there, as she told the Tagesspiegel.
“That was important to me, I then realized what kind of pull it is.” In her farewell speech, she also thanked her youth club and her family extensively, who had set an example for her, “to be thankful for what you do Has”.
Schnaderbeck has also used her reach to encourage other people, in lectures she spoke about her own coming out and took a stand against discrimination on social media.
In this respect, Schnaderbeck not only received special moments from football, she gave him at least as many in return – and these will have an after-effect.
