Steffi Jones

Club

Jones started playing football at the age of four. From 1979 to 1986, she played in mixed youth teams for SV Bonames in Frankfurt. In 1986, she joined the girls' team of SG Praunheim, and moved to the club's women's team in 1988. In 1991, Jones moved to FSV Frankfurt, and subsequently changed teams almost every year until she joined 1. FFC Frankfurt in 2000. In 2002, she joined Washington Freedom to play in WUSA for two years before returning to Frankfurt. Jones ended her career as a player on 9 December 2007.

International

Jones' first cap for the German national team was in 1993, during the third-place match of the UEFA Women's Championship against Denmark, which Germany lost. From 1997, she won three consecutive European Championships and a bronze medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics. Jones was also part of the squad that won the 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup; she suffered a rupture of her cruciate ligament in the third game of the tournament and was sidelined for six months. She won Olympic bronze for the second time at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Jones announced the end of her international career on 26 March 2007. She finished her career with nine goals in 111 caps.

A dual German and American citizen, Jones is the daughter of a German mother and an African-American father. Her father was a soldier stationed in West Germany; he left the family early in her life to return to the United States. Jones was raised by her single mother in a working-class neighborhood in Frankfurt. One brother, Christian, has struggled with drug addiction; another brother, Frank, served as an American soldier in Iraq and lost both legs in an assault in 2006. Jones entered a registered partnership with her girlfriend, Nicole, in June 2014. She had come out publicly as a lesbian in February 2013. Jones' autobiography, Der Kick des Lebens (The Kick of Life), was released in August 2007. In 2021, she featured in Schwarze Adler, a documentary detailing the experiences of Black players in German professional football.

Personal

11 June 2006: Hessian Order of Merit "for many years of voluntary services as patron of the Ballance 2006 – Integration und Toleranz für eine friedliche Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft project