Stephanie Ann "Steffi" Jones (born 22 December 1972) is a retired German football defender. She now works as a football administrator and was in charge of organizing the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup in Germany.
Biography
She scored nine goals in 111 caps for the German national team between 1993 and 2007.[2] In March 2007, she retired from the national team and in December 2007 she announced her retirement from active football to become president of the organisation committee of 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup.[3]
Career
Club career
Jones started playing soccer 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 team in 1988. In 1991, she moved to FSV Frankfurt and had 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 going back to Frankfurt where she ended her career as a player on 9 December 2007.
International career
Jones' first cap for Germany 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 with the German team, bronze at the 2000 Summer Olympics and was part of the German squad that won the 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup. She suffered a rupture of her cruciate ligament early on in the tournament and was sidelined for six months. In 2004, she won Olympic bronze for the second time in Athens.
On 26 March 2007, Jones announced the end of her international career.
Managerial career
On 30 March 2015 it was announced that Jones would become the new German head coach in 2016.[4]
Honours
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“[5]
Club
Country
Personal life
Jones is the daughter of a German mother and an African American soldier stationed in what was then West Germany. Her father left the family early in her life and returned to the United States, and she was raised by her single mother in a tough 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.[6] She holds both German and American citizenship.
In August 2007, Jones' autobiographical book Der Kick des Lebens (The Kick of Life) was released.[7]
She is currently studying to obtain her coaching license at the German Sport University Cologne.
She came out publicly as lesbian in February 2013.[8]
She married her girlfriend in June 2014.
References
External links
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