ÖFB Women’s National Team: Karina Weininger finished her career in the summer

Carina Wenninger hangs up her soccer shoes for the summer. The ÖFB captain announced her resignation at the end of the season at a press conference in Vienna on Wednesday. “I can still help a lot of teams at the moment, but you have to stop when the weather is nicer,” said the 32-year-old. Her further career plan is already in place: Styria will take up a position managing the Austrian Football Association’s Women’s Bundesliga in July.

Dressed in the red-white-red ÖFB kit, the central defender was part of the squad that reached the semi-finals of the European Championships in summer 2017 – an absolute highlight of her career. “It was a great moment for me. It’s been an incredible 16 years in the national team. I loved it,” said the footballer, who implicitly thanked all her former clubs and ÖFB boss Erin Furman. “Actually, she is at the peak of her career,” Foremann and the FA’s sports director Peter Schötel said in unison of Weininger.

Schoettle also said that at first he was not very happy with Weininger’s decision to quit because she was a mainstay in the national team. “She is or has been a leader, though not in a boisterous way, but smart and discreet – on and off the field. That has always impressed me.”

Weininger celebrated three championship titles with her old club, Bayern Munich. With her current club Roma, she still has a lot of planning in her final two months as a professional. “I want to win two more titles with Roma.” As the clear leader of the table, the Romans are aiming for the championship title and can also win the cup.

Wenninger jumped from Styria’s LUV Graz to Munich in 2007 as a 16-year-old alongside Viktoria Schnaderbeck. In addition to championships (16/21/2015), she also won the DFB Cup (2012) and the Bundesliga Cup (2011). Last summer, after 15 years and 303 competitive appearances in a Bayern shirt, the defender went on a one-year loan to the Italian capital at her own request.

In February, the Bayern record player announced that she would not return to Munich, as she still has a contract until 2024. “I would like to keep changing,” she said in an interview with APA at the time. The ÖFB has left open how things will continue after the current season. It is now clear that the intended changes are of a larger nature.

The move also has an impact on Foreman, who has already recorded the fifth player resignation in the past eight months. After Viktoria Schnaderbeck, he is now the second player ever to be awarded as the “Austria Team of the Year” in 2017 with the ÖFB team. Previously, Stephanie Enzinger, Jasmine Eder, and Lisa Makass had already said goodbye. Weininger took over the helm last summer after Schneiderbeck resigned.

He wore the red-white-red colors a total of 127 times, scoring seven goals. In addition to the semi-finals, she also made the quarter-finals of last year’s European Championships on her credits side. She hasn’t missed a minute in just two ÖFB finals so far. 2017 saw a 1-0 win over Switzerland, a 1-1 win over France, a 3-0 victory over Iceland and a thrilling rise to the quarter-finals against Spain (5-3 after 0-0) in the Netherlands at the OFB’s premiere in big event. Only because of the penalty shootout loss against Denmark (0:3 after 0:0) it was not possible to reach the final.

2022 in England, after a 0-1 draw with the hosts at Old Trafford, victories over Northern Ireland (2-0) and Norway (1-0) ensured promotion to the knockout stage again. In the quarterfinals against Germany (0:2) the last stop was due to a lack of luck. And in retrospect, it’s clear that the positivity outweighed the subsequent months which were no longer the case. There was also a severe setback for Wenninger, as his World Cup dream exploded prematurely in a play-off duel in Scotland in October. Definitely a reason to say goodbye to football prematurely.