For a month the squad of 20 girls has been training under the coaching of Dusan Pavlovic and his four-strong team of support staff. The aim has been to prepare for their first ever season in league football as well as possible.

Our girls are to play in the first division of the U14 Salzburg Sparkassenliga against boys' teams, as there is no separate league for them at U16 level. They are to contest their first ever competitive match this Friday 8 September 2023 against FC Pinzgau Saalfelden U14 (19:00 CET in Saalfelden).

Training and friendly matches

The team have trained – just like boys' teams at this age level – five times per week. After the end of the school holidays, that will be six, as two of the sessions can be held in the morning due to a very good co-operation with a school.

It's important in general that we offer girls the same set-up and the same level of professionalism as men. They should all have the same opportunities to develop.

Bernd Winkler, head of women's football

These initial very intensive weeks of training have been mixed with a few friendly matches to aid preparations. They have been very promising, most notably in the clashes against LASK (5-0), Sturm Graz (4-0) and Austria Vienna (7-0). We also took wins against Anif (1-0) and against the Upper Austria Women's Football Academy (5-1).

We deliberately chose high quality opponents, as we wanted to see how far we have come in our short preparation period compared to established girls' teams of the Austrian Bundesliga. We put in some very promising performances and found some very useful ideas on where we can improve further. That is no surprise given the very short time we have been playing for.

Bernd Winkler

Players from the region

Our U16w have not been playing together for long at all. Trials in January 2023 have led to a squad of 20 players. All the women are from the Salzburg region or nearby Bavaria, Upper Austria and Tirol.

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The first few weeks have been really good. We could put into practice everything we planned in advance. The girls are really motivated and go about things with so much dedication. They have made great progress, but there is still room for improvement. We still have a long path ahead that we are going to take step by step.

Bernd Winkler

Start of a new era: The FC Red Bull Salzburg girls