Gianni Infantino frequently speaks like an old man who listens only to old men. He is not quite as brazen as his FIFA predecessor, the dinosaurian Sepp Blatter. But his rhetoric sometimes strays from puzzling to cringey to absurd. On Friday, he went a step further, infuriating many with a quote that spread like wildfire, context be damned. Speaking at FIFA’s second Women’s Football Convention in Sydney, he told women to “pick the right battles, pick the right fights.”
He urged them to “push” for equality in soccer, to “push” on FIFA’s “doors.”
“You have the power to do it,” he said.
He never acknowledged that men, and he more so than anyone, have far more power and far more responsibility to right the historical wrongs that have suppressed women’s soccer for decades.
And the most baffling part of his baffling sermon was that he and FIFA, despite this rhetorical lapse, have actually been doing plenty of pushing themselves.
He was speaking on Day 30 of a wildly successful Women’s World Cup, a World Cup in which FIFA invested and from which FIFA reaped rewards. It smashed records and surpassed expectations. It changed players’ lives and laymen’s perceptions. It was the “paradigm shift” that Megan Rapinoe had predicted, a point of no return for the women’s soccer rocketship, a $570 million bonanza that foretold future profits and limitless growth.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” Sarai Bareman, FIFA’s chief women’s football officer, said in an emotional speech Saturday. “We’ve moved past potential. This tournament was a turning point. We’ve been talking about women’s football as this cultural movement. And this year, we have felt a seismic shift in the way that people see the women’s game.”
Their biggest challenge, now, is to sustain that shift in the three-year, 10-month interim between World Cups, and to use this quadrennial showcase to ease the broader sport’s growing pains rather than mask them.
“Yes, the World Cup is unbelievably special, but it is a bit of a bubble for some of these players; it’s not their everyday experience,” Sarah Gregorious, a director at FIFPRO, the global soccer players’ union, said Friday.
Many of those everyday experiences are still unstable, riddled with hardships and sexism — both acute and systemic.
And although FIFA can’t remedy everything alone, it can help.
The business case, investment
Infantino’s now-infamous speech was also full of back-patting. It was self-congratulatory, as if to solicit praise for FIFA’s long-overdue women’s soccer awakening. FIFA, essentially, wants credit for cleaning up messes that its own neglect helped create. This branch of Infantino rhetoric irks some trailblazers who pushed for investment long before he did, before it became common sense.
And once again, the rhetoric actually undermines a new reality: FIFA seems to genuinely be doing good work.
Infantino isn’t some visionary feminist. But he is a ruthless businessman hellbent on growing FIFA revenues, and he seemingly awoke to the business case for women’s soccer last decade. He committed $1 billion to development worldwide. FIFA committed well over $400 million to the 2023 World Cup, to everything from improved accommodations for players to increased marketing and promotion. It took a tournament previously bundled with the men’s World Cup, essentially as a free add-on for broadcasters and sponsors, and began selling rights separately. It charged down this new path with the express goal of monetizing women’s soccer. And already, it is winning.
FIFA knew — because the women’s game had long been oppressively underpromoted — that the returns on investment might not be immediate. Some people, Infantino said, warned him that a properly funded Women’s World Cup might be a money-loser, to which he responded: “Well, if we have to subsidize, we’ll subsidize.”
“But actually,” he said Friday at the close of the very first World Cup under FIFA’s new women’s soccer strategy, “this World Cup generated over $570 million in revenues. And so we broke even. We didn’t lose any money. And we generated the second highest income of any [single-sport world championship] — besides of course the men’s World Cup — at a global stage.”
The on-field product was also spectacular. The decision to expand to 32 teams was vindicated by the likes of Jamaica, South Africa and Morocco. The games drew unprecedented interest everywhere from Europe to Vietnam to Colombia. And perhaps the most refreshing benefit of FIFA’s investment was that the dominant storylines, at least for much of the month, weren’t about inequities or grievances; they were about gripping soccer.
And in the process, the common sense became undeniable. FIFA clearly sees it. Wealthy American investors increasingly see it in the National Women’s Soccer League. The women’s game can be lucrative. The problem is that, on all six continents, countless soccer officials (mostly men) still have their eyes closed.
Which is why South African players arrived at the World Cup in a fight with their soccer federation over bonus payments; and why Jamaican players had to launch a crowdfunding campaign to support their preparations; and why many others had to overcome abuse, the depths of which we’ll likely never know.
“Players are performing in spite of the mistreatment by the national federations,” Alex Culvin, FIFPRO’s head of strategy and research, told Yahoo Sports. “That’s fact.”
And while the hopeful view, which Bareman expressed Friday, is that full Australian stadiums and inescapable buzz will naturally spread the gospel, history suggests that arms will have to be twisted.
“I think this is where FIFA needs to do more,” Rapinoe said back in June. “Yeah, you’ve done a lot [with the World Cup], but your power goes beyond that — to mandate that these federations support their teams the way that they would support everybody for the men’s World Cup.”
“FIFA’s role is the most important role,” Culvin said. “Without their pressure, without their enforcement, without their kind of strategic vision for women’s football … [there are] member associations that maybe don’t have the best intentions for their women’s team.” FIFA’s imperative, she said, is “to really push them onto the next level.”
FIFA making strides, but accelerated growth of women’s soccer is key
Each of those member associations, the 211 national federations that comprise FIFA, gets funding from the global governing body via the FIFA Forward program. Its latest iteration promises $5 million to each federation over the coming four years for operational costs, $3 million “to execute well-planned, specific football projects” and up to $1.2 million in other need-based assistance.
The difficult part, as exposed by the U.S. Department of Justice last decade, is tracking where all that money actually goes.
FIFA claims — and most evidence seems to support the assertion — that its much-improved auditing system has largely ensured that the money goes toward soccer, rather than into rich men’s pockets. Still, though, there are questions around what percentage of that money goes toward the women’s game, and even concerns that World Cup prize money won’t reach players.
FIFA promised at least $30,000 to every Women’s World Cup player — and $60,000 to each Round of 16 participant, with sums increasing round by round — but the idea that these would be direct payments was a bit deceiving. Infantino admitted last month that they’d be made through the national associations, “and then the associations will of course make the relevant payments to their own players,” he said.
But will they? Infantino has twice called it a “recommendation” rather than a mandate. “That kind of leaves a little bit of uncertainty for the players,” Culvin, the FIFPRO head of strategy, said.
“But for us,” Culvin continued, “there’s been assurances that that money will go directly [to players].” If it doesn’t, she said, “there should be consequences,” and she’s confident there would be. “We’re very very hopeful that the distribution will be to players in the way that it was guaranteed, 6-10 weeks after the tournament is finished.”
Bareman, FIFA’s women’s soccer chief, told reporters in Sydney on Saturday that she “will personally be making sure that every dollar that gets paid that is for those players will end up in their bank accounts.” If it does, the $30,000 alone will allow some players to subsidize meager club salaries and fully professionalize. (A recent FIFPRO survey of 362 international women’s players found that 60% considered themselves semi-pros or amateurs.)
The broader worry is that FIFA won’t follow through on other commitments. It has talked about safeguarding but has often failed to protect players from abuse. It has talked about bolstering women’s club soccer with new competitions, but, as it prepares for a groundbreaking 32-team 2025 men’s Club World Cup, the women’s Club World Cup concept remains just that, a concept, as it has been for almost a decade.
When it goes beyond talking, when it executes strategies, this relatively progressive FIFA has done wonders for women’s soccer — for the sport its FIFA ancestors neglected. The 2023 World Cup was shiny new evidence of that. The 2027 World Cup — especially if co-hosted by the U.S. and Mexico — will surely be another extravaganza, and could be accompanied by equal pay.
But it’s the interim, and the thousands of players who’ll never reach a World Cup, that are equally important. It’s important that FIFA fuels the growth of the club game, and works collaboratively at national and local levels to accelerate the sport’s economic maturation.
“What’s important for us at FIFPRO is that these conversations don’t go away after [the World Cup final on] Sunday,” Gregorious said. “I want to make sure that everyone’s still talking about the needs of these players and their rights come Monday, come September, come October, and into the years of the next Women’s World Cup.”
