If Gianni Infantino is going to destroy football as we know it, is it really so much to ask that he include women in the plans?
Yes, in a move to secure “financial growth” but in fact if successful will cripple continental and club football as well as excise what soul remains of the World Cup, Fifa has submitted a 25-page sales pitch to all its 211 member organisations that includes just a single mention of the women’s game.
Sell off tournaments to private investors, flog the rights to tech companies and streamers, ramp up ticket prices so only influencers and the super-rich can afford to watch, stage the World Cup every two years, damage domestic leagues as well as the players’ bodies – no proposal is too radical nor too mercenary for Infantino and his pursuit of a buck.
But involving women or daring to imagine they might contribute to the sport’s commercial future is apparently where he draws the line.
Women’s football isn’t just an afterthought of his plans – it will be their first casualty.
Uefa’s 55 member organisations have voted to boycott all Fifa competitions until it drops Infantino’s proposals. It is the strongest possible condemnation – a World Cup without any European teams is unimaginable; it will kill it.
But there are four years to backtrack and renegotiate before it hits the men. The Women’s World Cup is only 11 months away; the Under-20 Women’s World Cup is set to commence in Poland in September.Uefa is right to take a stand – but it will be women who in effect are denied opportunities, revenue and exposure, not the men.
It’s hard to feel surprised that Infantino has neglected to consider women, again. In fact, he seems to see their involvement as a favour, a concession, “giving in” rather than vital, just and earned.
Ahead of the women’s World Cup final in 2023, during which female players were fighting for equal pay to the men, he invited them to “convince us men” at Fifa of their value to the sport.
“Pick the right battles. Pick the right fights. You have the power to change. You have the power to convince us men what we have to do and what we don’t have to do… With men, with Fifa, you will find open doors. Just push the doors. They are open,” he said.
Bizarre, patronising, backwards – and dismal confirmation that when it came to women, Fifa still needed convincing in the first place.
Then, when that tournament’s final was soured by Spanish football president Luis Rubiales kissing player Jenni Hermoso on the lips, it took Infantino a week to condemn the violation – even though he was on the same stage at the medal ceremony, and even though it immediately ignited a global scandal that threatened to tear women’s sport apart.
Infantino simply does not care. He doesn’t care about fans, he doesn’t care about clubs, he doesn’t care about rules; he doesn’t care about being liked or making honourable decisions or preserving the integrity of the sport. What he cares about is money. And how power and proximity to power can get him more of it.
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Kevin Garside: It’s over for Gianni Infantino Tim Rich: Arsene Wenger has betrayed us allAll the more ironic, then, that he fails to recognise just how lucrative women’s football can be for him. Women’s professional footballers have never been as good or as bankable; there has not been this kind of shift in the prestige of a sport in generations.
The fanbases are swelling, the players are superstars, streamers are fighting for the broadcasting rights. Women’s football is already worth hundreds of millions of pounds annually and that figure is only accelerating – there is an enormous untapped market of female and young fans have yet to be fully exploited.
For a man who only cares about money, he is missing a very big opportunity. Infantino’s sidelining of women from his visions for football’s future isn’t just bad PR – it’s very bad business.
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