{"id":837778,"date":"2026-08-01T12:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T12:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/837778\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T12:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T12:46:11","slug":"womens-football-continues-to-be-used-as-a-pawn-in-gianni-infantinos-fifa-tenure-fifa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/837778\/","title":{"rendered":"Women\u2019s football continues to be used as a pawn in Gianni Infantino\u2019s Fifa tenure | Fifa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite not having been deemed worthy of more than a single mention in Fifa\u2019s 25-page sales deck<\/a> to its 211 member associations on its doomed proposal to sell off stakes in the World Cup to private investors, now very expensive waste paper, it was women\u2019s football that had found itself on the frontline in the fight for the \u201csoul of football\u201d.<\/p>\n

Uefa\u2019s statement that European national teams would not \u201cparticipate in any Fifa competition for so long as these proposals remain alive, unless this proposal has been abandoned in its entirety and binding assurances have been given that Fifa will never again open its governance or competitions to private ownership\u201d, was a bold, necessary and effective declaration of war against the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, with the Under-20 Women\u2019s World Cup being held in Poland next month; the Under-17 Women\u2019s World Cup and Uefa\u2019s qualifying playoffs for the senior tournament both beginning in October; and the big one, the Women\u2019s World Cup itself, taking place in Brazil next summer, women\u2019s tournaments would have been the first test cases had a boycott gone ahead.<\/p>\n

There was no further detail on the FA\u2019s plans for England\u2019s two-legged World Cup playoff against Greece, but Uefa\u2019s call for a boycott would have had an impact on the women\u2019s game in September.<\/p>\n

A boycott of the Women\u2019s World Cup would have been catastrophic and yet that was the likely consequence of Infantino\u2019s deadline. The 2023 Women\u2019s World Cup was the first to break even after generating more than $570m (\u00a3424m) in revenue and Fifa<\/a> said in May 2025 it is targeting $1bn in revenue from the 2027 edition.<\/p>\n

The women\u2019s game is so desperately reliant on international competition for accelerating its growth that the knock-on impact of having no World Cup would have set progress back far more than four years.<\/p>\n

However, Uefa was not wrong in its stance and the subsequent collapse of Infantino\u2019s masterplan after the almighty fallout from demonstrates as much. It was not European football\u2019s governing body that engineered the timeframe that put women\u2019s football on the frontline and it was correct not to exclude women\u2019s football, or youth football, from its arsenal in the fight back against Infantino\u2019s attempt to steamroller through his plans.<\/p>\n

England\u2019s dream of avenging their World Cup final defeat in 2023 was thrown into doubt by Gianni Infantino\u2019s proposals. Photograph: Zac Goodwin\/PA<\/p>\n

The blame for the threat posed by a boycott on women\u2019s football lay squarely at the feet of Gianni \u201cI have four daughters\u201d Infantino<\/a>, who was praised in February by Jill Ellis, Fifa\u2019s chief football officer and twice a World Cup-winning coach, for his \u201ccommitment to accelerating the women\u2019s game and increasing women\u2019s influence in shaping its future\u201d and under whose leadership \u201cinvestment has moved from rhetoric to action\u201d.<\/p>\n

To an extent Ellis is right \u2013 Infantino is the Fifa president who has done the most for the women\u2019s game. But when his predecessor is Sepp Blatter, a man who said in 2004<\/a> that \u201ctighter shorts\u201d was the way to get more people watching the women\u2019s game, the bar is staggeringly low.<\/p>\n

Yes, under Infantino Fifa has invested more in the women\u2019s game than ever before, but it has been a pawn in his tenure: initially useful for showing just how progressive and in tune with modern society he and Fifa are, and now useful because it presents an opportunity for medium- to long-term financial gain as one of the fastest growing and least\u2011tapped areas of the game.<\/p>\n

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Step behind the rhetoric and handouts and Infantino\u2019s real attitude to the women\u2019s game is evident. In 2023 Sky News reported the Fifa president had left the Women\u2019s World Cup for Tahiti after less than a week, before returning later in the tournament. By contrast, he went to at least some part of every one of the 64 games of the 2022 men\u2019s World Cup and at times appeared at two a day during the latest men\u2019s edition despite the huge environmental impact of using a private jet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 2027 Women\u2019s World Cup in Brazil starts in less than 11 months. Photograph: Athit Perawongmetha\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Perhaps Infantino waited until the beginning of a new four-year men\u2019s World Cup cycle to try to limit the impact of any backlash on the showpiece event, but in doing so he added to the pile of evidence demonstrative of real attitude towards women\u2019s football, with women\u2019s edition of the tournament on the imminent horizon.<\/p>\n

It would have been oddly fitting, then, if the women\u2019s game had become the sun that melted his Icarus wings. Luckily, women\u2019s football didn\u2019t have to pay that costly price. However, this episode must act as a warning, both to those who care about the development of the women\u2019s game and its future and those who care about the future of the men\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

The reality is that the European Super League debacle and this latest and most blatant of attempts to hand the wealth of football to private finance vultures show that private finance will keep coming back as they search for ways to get a piece of the pie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite not having been deemed worthy of more than a single mention in Fifa\u2019s 25-page sales deck to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":837779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-837778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}