Club soccer body the European Club Association (ECA) has unveiled its first ever womens soccer strategy, with a roadmap for a second-tier European club competition and a Club World Cup.
ECA has built a comprehensive strategy plan Be a Changemaker for the 2021-2023 cycle to boost women's soccer, identifying six target areas to foster a more robust ecosystem and move towards more professionalization. They include advancing the economic development, targeting new commercial opportunities, facilitating the creation of new clubs and producing research studies .
The release of the new strategy comes timely, ahead of the launch of the UEFA Womens Champions League in its new format from the 2021/22 season, which includes a group stage in the last 16 for the first time. At the moment, the Womens Champions League remains the only European club competition in womens soccer. In contrast, the mens game boasts the Champions League, the Europa League and this summer the third-tier Conference League will be launched.
Through ECAs first ever womens football strategy, Be a Changemaker, we will chip away at the age-old argument it wouldnt happen in the mens game and break free from the shackles that have held womens football back for so long, said ECA Head of Womens Football Claire Bloomfield.
The body is as well contemplating a global tournament for the womens game to build the sport and create a level-playing field. The mens game has the annual Club World Cup, which will be expanded by FIFA in the future. You have the ability to develop a global club game much more quickly than in the mens side, where I think Fifas ambition on the Club World Cup is probably a 50-year ambition to try to even out that competitive balance, and is a really tough one at that, said ECA chief executive Charlie Marshall.
In the womens game there is much more potential, much more quickly, to develop global competitive balance. The prospect of a Club World Cup, fairly soon in the womens game, assuming that calendars can be resolved and all of that kind of thing, is a really, really exciting one and I know Fifa is very, very keen on it as well.
In the past, FIFA president Gianni Infantino has fleetingly spoken of a Womens Club World Cup, without ever offering much detail.
At a news conference, Chelsea coach Emma Hayes remained noncommittal about the ECAs future plans when asked if investing away from the domestic game was a good idea for future development. She said: It is the job of the ECA to explore those opportunities. I know that we are working towards the same opportunity for women as we do for men in all competitions. Once the ECA deem the time to be right, it will be appropriate to introduce new competitions to the womens game.
