The Story of Meetup
The Story of Meetup by Sorin.
I will try to keep it short. I will fail.
We started in 2016 after I noticed a bunch of football groups in Vienna that were either very competitive with intense-dangerous tackles or filled with people with a bad pitch attitude. The skill did not bothered me that much, the attitude of people was something that I could not handle. It was not that the people were bad, it was mostly about the people who organise the football sessions – they did not cared much what happens on the pitch, they tolerate bad football habits. So I decided to start my own group with focus on attitude (skill did not matter). The rules are simple, enforced from 2016 and tell the followings:
- Play friendly with a smile on your face
- Be extremely nice with each other, no matter your background
- No slide or rough tackles
- No insults, not mocking
- No fighting
- No pushing, no intentional faults
- Accidents can happen, apologise and / or help if necessary and move on
Initially, we played only Friday nights. Later we added Tuesday nights. We started to play on 2 pitches, or 3 pitches, 7a side with 6 teams.
The group is organized with support from Meetup.Com where I pay a monthly fee in order to organize proper football events. Currently the group is getting close to 2000 members, hopefully 2021 by the end of the year. In 2018, we developed Football Friendly v2 by creating a 11a side team (Meetup United SC) that play under the Austrian Football Federation. In this team, we have selected the best and most competitive players from the meetup events, mostly internationals but with a nice flavor of very competitive Austrians. Can we add here that we won the championship (2e Klasse DSG) in our first competitional year? That’s detail I know. We surprised the entire competitional system. We never had a football training session. But we had a fantastic attitude, experience & passion for what we did.
The 2018-2019 season was a success as the 11 side team enjoyed the ultimate performance by promoting to 1e Klasse winning the glory, first league position, the championship and one night, all included dinner, in the all mighty Rathaus. An invite that no one should ever reject.
2019-2020 the group started to slowly develop as the Covid situation kicked in. The group continue to grow in the 2020-2021 season, but the season was also cancelled or unfinished due to the pandemic situation in the entire world. We decided to add a Reserves team because of the interest in football 11 a side grow from a week to another. We added the PINK POWER shirts and our story continues. We simply love these shirts and the football we play.
Basically today, 2021-2022 season, the group is getting close to 1800 members. From these we do have two WhatsApp groups of about 200 each very active members. We have 60+ Spielerpasses for the 11a side football and things look great. We are filming our football events, we have booked a football training session on every Wednesday night.
If you want to move to the next level and get yourself a Spielerpass with Meetup United, please message someone in the group, we are actively looking for good people with an excellent attitude.
About the costs of organizing this football, we will talk maybe next time.
See ya on the pitch for the next football session.
Sorin WhatsApp +43 6764276984
