.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\nFIFA Chief of Global Football Development Ars\u00e8ne Wenger and two-time FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup winning coach Jill Ellis, who has assumed the role of FIFA Technical Advisory Group leader for women\u2019s football, have stressed their aims of ensuring men\u2019s and women\u2019s football coexist as part of the ongoing consultation in relation to the future International Match Calendar (IMC).<\/p>\n
The IMC sets the dates of national team matches and the days in which the players must be released by their clubs to join international squads. It therefore has a central role in the sustainable growth of football in all regions of the world and at all levels.<\/p>\n
FIFA is hearing from \u2013 and will continue to listen over the coming months \u2013 to views and opinions from all key stakeholders, including fans, about how to make the calendar better for each IMC. Men\u2019s, women\u2019s and youth competitions.<\/p>\n
Ahead of a first online summit with FIFA\u2019s member associations, which is being chaired by FIFA President Gianni Infantino \u2013 one of several opportunities to establish a constructive and open debate, at a global and regional level, over the coming months \u2013 both Ars\u00e8ne Wenger and Jill Ellis provided insight to their common approach at the Home of FIFA in Zurich, Switzerland. \u201cIt\u2019s critical that we make sure the men\u2019s and women\u2019s games coexist,\u201d said Ellis. \u201cAfter the [FIFA Women\u2019s] World Cup 2019, we saw there were over 1 billion [television] viewers; that there is an appetite out there. I think it\u2019s important for us to make sure that we grow our footprint, to be bigger. So to coexist together with the men\u2019s game makes total sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of the early debate about the consultation process has suggested that any changes to the men\u2019s game, could be to the detriment of the women\u2019s game. A suggestion the Frenchman is keen to refute.<\/p>\n
\u201c[At] the start of my career, [there] was purely the men\u2019s football calendar. Now, of course, the evolution of women\u2019s football has brought a necessity to communicate well and to make sure we share the calendar throughout the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat starts with creating space for everybody. That is absolutely vital. We have to sit down together and ask: \u2018When do you play?\u2019 and \u2018When do we play?\u2019 and see if we can find a way to make that work,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The progressive competitive imbalance, absence of a mandatory rest period for players, the excessive number of travels and matches endangering player health and well-being and the constant interruption of domestic leagues disrupting club competitions are some of the core topics under the microscope as part of the IMC consultation process.<\/p>\n
In recent years, the growth of women\u2019s domestic leagues and the increased volume of international player transfers has exacerbated the same issues, now facing the women\u2019s international game.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously I\u2019ve been in the global game, but I want to understand everybody\u2019s viewpoint at our table,\u201d said Ellis. \u201cTo Ars\u00e8ne\u2019s point, it is about communication and it\u2019s about listening. To bring in former players, current players, club coaches, national team coaches. You want to understand the lens that they look through.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you bring people together and you start to share thoughts and ideas, it truly allows you to have a more complete grasp on what everybody is dealing with and what everybody\u2019s challenge is and what everybody\u2019s opportunities are.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was very important to start this process to understand [questions like] what are the challenges to the Europeans, to the South Americans, to the club coaches, to the national team coaches? We want a model that is player-centric. Ultimately, that\u2019s our game, the player. And so making sure that their lens and their voice is represented in this process has been very important.\u201d<\/p>\n
FIFA committed itself to reviewing the frequency of men\u2019s, women\u2019s and youth national team competitions after 166 FIFA member associations at the 71st FIFA Congress in May 2021 voted for a feasibility study to be carried out to explore the possible impact of holding the FIFA World Cup and FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup every two years.<\/p>\n
The long-term goal for FIFA, oft-stated by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, is to have 50 national teams and 50 clubs competing at the highest level of both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s game, in line with his FIFA Vision (2020-2023).<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want both parties (the men\u2019s and women\u2019s game) to be happy and to develop. Therefore, I would say that it\u2019s important to have a quality organisation on both sides that satisfies everybody,\u201d continued Wenger.<\/p>\n
\u201cI agree,\u201d added Ellis in conclusion. \u201cI think our fan bases cross over. You see women at men\u2019s matches, and you see young boys and men at women\u2019s matches. I agree with Ars\u00e8ne: we want to grow both platforms.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, you want this to truly be a global game. Right now, we\u2019re still in our processes, we\u2019ve got a lot of developing countries and nations on the women\u2019s side. So to see that accelerate is part of our ambitions, so that we (FIFA) have access to everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ZURICH, Switzerland, September 30, 2021\/APO Group\/ — Current international match calendars for women\u2019s and men\u2019s football expire in 2023 and 2024 respectively; Ars\u00e8ne Wenger and Jill Ellis leading consultation process with all stakeholders; First online summit with FIFA (www.FIFA.com) member associations taking place on Thursday 30 September. FIFA Chief of Global Football Development Ars\u00e8ne Wenger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}