Identifying Best Practice in Women's Football - FIFA/CIES ...

!"#$%&'()*(+,%'-./0%1-,(1.1 “The future of football is feminine” 1As early as the 1990s, Joseph Blatter, now President of FIFA (Federation Internationale deFootball Association), declared that the definitive next domain of football’s development wasto challenge the gender divide. Following the success of the 1999 Women’s World Cup in theUSA, where the final sold out the over 90 000 seat stadium, the Rose Bowl in California, anda cumulative television audience of over 40 million viewers 2 , the future for women’s footballdid indeed seem bright. However, the reality of growing an emerging sport around the globehas come with its challenges. From fighting for space with existing sports, to limitedbroadcast and sponsorship opportunities, to institutional barriers, and failed professionalleagues, women’s football has had its fair share of challenges. The journey to produce adefinitive career opportunity for aspiring female footballers, and to translate FIFA World Cupinterest into club success has proved difficult.However, recent developments such as the WPS (Women’s Professional Soccer) inthe USA, which has successfully run since 2009, and the inaugural 2009-2010 UEFA (Unionof European Football Associations) Women’s Champions League reflects progress at a clublevel. In addition, there are national leagues in most UEFA countries and even developingcountries around the world are increasingly running women’s football leagues 3 . Hence, it canbe seen that despite the challenges that women’s football has faced there is still a generalupward trend. With these developments, there has been a move towards professionalism,however the path towards a clear understanding of what it entails to be a professional womenfootballer, and the benchmarks of a professional women’s club are still unclear.As a result, this research project is aimed at profiling top European women’s clubs inthe context of their leagues in order to identify best practices, in particular regardingmanagement and administration, and to map the progress to professionalism. FromScandinavia to the Netherlands, Germany, France and England, a cross section of some of the""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""1 Joseph Blatter, FIFA President, in a public address at the 1995 Women`s World Cup in Sweden.2FIFA (n.d) Women’s World Cup USA 1999 Tournament Archive [WWW]. Available from:http://www.fifa.com/tournaments/archive/tournament=103/edition=4644/overview.html [Accessed 01/05/2010].3 Tatjana Haenni, Head of Women’s Competitions, FIFA, interview by Natalie Smith, tape recording, 3 June,2010, FIFA Headquarters, Zurich, Switzerland."6"