Women’s Football Is Being Used As A Bargaining Chip In Fifa’s Power Grab

Women's football didn't start this fight. It never does. But it looks set to feel the consequences first, and that tells you everything you need to know about where the women's game sits in the priorities of those running world football.

Uefa's decision to boycott all Fifa competitions is a bold move, and one we broadly support. But bold moves have collateral damage, and in this case the collateral damage has a very specific face: the players, teams and tournaments that make up the women's game.

The Tournament Timeline That Should Worry Everyone

The Fifa Under-20 Women's World Cup kicks off in Poland on 5 September. That's the first real test of whether this standoff between Uefa and Fifa actually bites.

If European teams don't show up, that tournament is immediately diminished. Young players who have spent years working toward a World Cup opportunity suddenly find themselves caught in a dispute they had no part in creating. That's not a hypothetical. That's weeks away.

And it doesn't stop there. The Under-17 Women's World Cup is scheduled for October in Morocco. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have Women's World Cup qualifiers that month too, feeding into next summer's tournament in Brazil. The schedule is stacked, and every fixture is now under a cloud.

Women's football is carrying more fixture risk right now than any other part of the game, and none of that risk was created by the women's game itself.

What Infantino Actually Wants

Let's be clear about what's being proposed here. Fifa wants to spin off a commercial subsidiary called Fifa Forward Enterprise, invite private investors to buy minority stakes in it, and use that structure to run its biggest tournaments including the World Cups.

The investment case has reportedly been laid out in a JP Morgan document that talks about expanding tournaments, increasing prize pot payouts and attracting talent through incentive-driven compensation. It paints Fifa as an under-monetised organisation sitting on top of the world's most-watched sporting event.

There is, by all accounts, no mention of the women's game anywhere in that document.

Not once. That's not an oversight. That's a statement of priorities.

The proposed lead investor is Thrive Eternal, a venture capital firm with ties to figures close to the Trump administration. Whether or not those political connections matter in a sporting context, it's another reminder that this proposal has the fingerprints of finance all over it and very little of the sport itself.

The Pattern Women's Football Keeps Living Through

Women's football has seen this before. It grows, it builds momentum, it gets close to genuine mainstream recognition, and then it gets caught in a storm it didn't cause.

The frustrating thing this time is that the women's game is arguably in the best shape it has ever been. Attendances are up. Broadcast interest is increasing. The 2023 Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand was a genuine cultural moment. And now, right when that momentum should be carrying into qualifiers and development tournaments, there's a governance crisis threatening to wipe out fixtures entirely.

Concacaf has rejected Infantino's proposal. The Asian Football Confederation has stood with Uefa. Even a senior Fifa adviser has quit, calling the plan a bad deal for football. The opposition is broad and credible.

Fifa's response has been to say nobody is selling football and that media coverage has been inaccurate. That doesn't address the central concern, which is that private investors with no accountability to fans or federations would have a stake in the game's most important tournaments.

Our Read On Where This Goes

Infantino has set a deadline of 19 September for federations to accept his proposals. In our view, that deadline is going to come and go without resolution, and the women's game is going to pay the price in the meantime.

The Under-20 Women's World Cup starting in September is the first live test. If it goes ahead without disruption, it means the two sides are moving toward compromise behind the scenes. If teams start withdrawing, this gets very serious very quickly.

The smart money, if we're being honest, is on a messy fudge rather than a clean outcome. Fifa will soften the language around investor control, Uefa will claim a partial victory, and the proposal will be repackaged rather than dropped. Women's football will be told to be grateful it all worked out.

That's the cycle, and until the women's game has real structural representation in these boardroom fights, it's a cycle that isn't going to break anytime soon.