Tuğba Tekkal

Tekkal started playing football at an early age, first on kick-about areas, and later for a club. For a long time, she kept her passion for the sport a secret from her parents. However, with the support of her siblings, she eventually managed to win her parents over to her hobby. Tekkal played for TSV Havelse from 2002 to December 2007, and for Hamburger SV II (HSV) from January to June 2008. In 2007, she moved to the Frauen-Bundesliga club Hamburger SV. She made 21 appearances for HSV, scoring three goals. She was signed at the age of 20 following a successful trial, though she was only able to move to Hamburg after considerable effort to convince her initially skeptical parents. While playing in the 2. Frauen-Bundesliga for HSV, she received only a monthly expense allowance of around €175 and supported herself through a part-time job at a gym. For the 2009–10 season, Tekkal moved to 1. FC Köln in the 2. Frauen-Bundesliga. She left the club at the end of the 2010–11 season, intending to end her athletic career to focus on her professional career as a sports and fitness specialist, but returned to the team during the 2011–12 winter break. After finishing as runners-up in the 2012–13 and 2013–14 seasons, she and the team achieved promotion to the Frauen-Bundesliga in 2014–15 by winning the 2. Frauen-Bundesliga Süd title undefeated. In 2017, she decided to end her football career. The deciding factor was an ankle injury, she could not reconcile the lengthy rehabilitation…

Tuğba Tekkal was born to Turkish parents Fatma and Şeyhmus Tekkal in Hannover, West Germany on 5 March 1985. Her parents, of Kurdish descent and members of the Yazidi faith community, immigrated from a village in Diyarbalr Province, southeastern Turkey to West Germay in the 1970s. In West Germany, her parents worked as migrant workers (German: Gastarbeiter). Her father worked in the beginning as a truck driver, and later as a tiler. Her mother was a homeworker. She has ten siblings. Her sister Düzen Tekkal (born 1978) is an author, television journalist, filmmaker, war correspondent, political scientist, and social entrepreneur. Her brother Timur Tekkal (born 1981) is a German national rugby union player. She grew up in Linden, a working-class district of Hanover, in a four-room apartment shared with her ten siblings. The family living room frequently served as a meeting place for politically active Yazidis; her father provided shelter to refugees and campaigned for the recognition of the religious community as a group facing political persecution. Today, she lives in Cologne and Berlin. She advocates through her work for the empowerment of women and the values of the free democratic basic order. She regularly gives talks about her role as a woman, an athlete, and a German with a migration background.

2. Frauen-Bundesliga 2014–15 (1. FC Köln)