When life became more important than titles – Mala Grohs’ special time at FC Bayern

It’s just before kick-off at the Campus. The air smells of grass, bratwurst and that slightly nervous expectation which football always brings with it. Somewhere, studs clatter on concrete. Laughter can be heard coming from the dressing room. “Diese Tage voller Sonne” (“These Days Full of Sunshine”) can be heard, loud enough to reveal: work is being done here, but please, not without humour. And then she comes out. Not with a grand entrance, but as if someone had put sense and warmth into a Bayern training outfit. Mala Grohs.

📸 The best photos of Mala Grohs at FC Bayern Women: 

Seven years with FC Bayern Women: in football that’s about three generations, half a revolution and five new tactical trends. When she came to Munich from Bochum as a youngster in 2019, it was initially a case of being patient, learning and waiting in the reserve team. No red carpet. While others might have grown restless, Grohs did something that’s almost became a rarity in professional football: she just kept going. Training, developing, more training. Always a bit better, always a bit closer to the first team.

She gradually fought her way into the Bayern goal. Not with great rallying cries but with the quiet persistence of someone who obviously understood from an early age that talent is nice, but in the long run, perseverance and hard work often pay off. And eventually she was no longer a prospect or a good back-up, but the number one. That’s perhaps the most remarkable thing about Mala: she never seemed to have anything to prove to anyone – and yet she did it constantly for that very reason.

📺 As well as Grohs, Georgia Stanway & Caro Simon are departing Munich:

As well as being goalkeeper, she’s a hugely important person and point of contact in the dressing room. That rare breed of person who organises a team not through volume, but through presence. Warm-hearted, reliable, humours, smart. Someone whose value to the team is immediately recognisable, because teams are not made from passes and moves, but from glances, little conversations, shared nerves and the feeling that everything is somehow easier together.

Then came 2024. The diagnosis of a malignant tumour. Two words that immediately make any sporting dramatization seem ridiculously small. In the blink of an eye, it was no longer about titles, squad status or the question of who’ll be in goal at the weekend, but about health, about mortality.

There are stories in sport that are quickly drenched in so much emotion that they’re hard to recognise anymore. This one didn’t need that. Even here, Grohs did what she does best: kept going. With courage, with remarkable clarity, with openness. She spoke about her scars, about fear, about respect for follow-up appointments, about mental exhaustion. Not as a heroic tale, but as a human being. That's what made her return so impressive.

When she made her comeback against Lyon in March 2025, saving penalties and playing as if she’d never been seriously ill, it was impressive from a sporting point of view. But it actually meant something else: someone coming back, not in goal but into their own life. Maybe that's the real story of Mala Grohs at FC Bayern: not the five Bundesliga titles, not the two cup wins, not the two Supercups, not the penalty saves, but this mix of ambition and calmness, of professionalism and humanity. She worked her way up, established herself as first-choice keeper, fell down, stood back up, returned and remained herself throughout.

Or, as she once said herself: “I am fine the way I am.” So much life experience encompassed in just seven words. Now, after seven years, Grohs is leaving Munich, the Campus, the dressing room, the familiar faces, this little habitat of football and friendships.

The slight pain of any good farewell is that you only truly realise how much someone became part of the whole when they leave. Mala Grohs leaves FC Bayern Women as a champion, cup winner, with a comeback story and, more importantly, as a person who in seven years has given this club something that doesn’t appear in any statistics: attitude. And as everyone knows, a club can never have enough true role models.

FC Bayern Women were given a reception at Munich Town Hall on Monday afternoon: