We are now just seven days away from the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023, Michael Pirrie international events advisor, looks forward to a tournament that could revolutionise women’s sport.
With a vibrant economy, vast mineral reserves, sophisticated urban infrastructure, vibrant migrant communities and spectacular coastal beach and rain forest settings, Australia has often been called the ‘Lucky Country.’
Confronted post pandemic, like many nations, with high interest and inflation rates and growing cost of living pressures, Australia hasn’t felt lucky in recent times.
When challenged, the nation often expresses itself through sport, and turns to its sporting heroes and teams for inspiration.
Thousands filled pre-dawn city streets and centres late last year to watch the men’s soccer team on giant screens during the World Cup from Qatar.
The mood in the early morning gatherings swung wildly between euphoria and despair every time the Socceroos scored or were scored against in scenes rarely seen before in Australian sport.
This sports obsessed nation is preparing to take its passion for soccer to another level.
Just months after the FIFA Men’s World Cup survived a crash landing in Qatar with one of the great cup finals, the best women’s footballers are gathering on the vast island continent of Australia and neighbouring New Zealand, preparing to take football’s possibilities to new heights.
WOMEN’S BIGGEST SPORTING EVENT
The explosive skill and dazzle of femme football will soon fill screens of all shapes and sizes around the globe as the world cup rotates from the Middle East to one of the world’s most distant and passionate regions for sport.
The FIFA Women’s World Cup beginning next Thursday will be the biggest women’s sporting event of modern times, showcasing the silky, high impact footwork and daring displays of precision football movement and planning, based on total team commitment – key characteristics of the immense appeal and popularity of women’s football.
The geographic and cultural changeover could hardly be more extreme as the world cup transitions from the smallest host nation in Qatar to one of the largest.
The Women’s Cup will play out across 12 venues in 10 cities spanning Australia and New Zealand, and several time zones.
Cup preparations have formed a microcosm of the geopolitical and economic conditions shaping sport in a post pandemic world struggling with the widening fall out from Russia’s war and possible recession.
While the IOC encounters opposition over plans to return Russian athletes to the Olympic Games, FIFA’s bans on Russian teams remain in place for the Women’s World Cup, with co-hosts Australia and New Zealand continuing to supply military aid to Ukraine.
The Canadian Soccer Players’ Association meanwhile expressed deep concern earlier this year over cuts to the national programme, prompting a warning at the time that its women’s Olympic gold medal team from the Tokyo Games was considering possible Cup strike action.
The recent star-studded launch of the USWNT, which included US President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden and pop superstar Taylor Swift, among others, confirmed the growing geopolitical and social significance of soccer in American and global society.
The team’s launch contrasted sharply with China’s diminishing presence on the world cup stage despite allocating vast resources to President Xi Jinpin’s directive for his nation to become a global superpower in the world game.
FIFA is hoping this Cup can regain momentum for women’s football disrupted by the pandemic and showcase the progress in women’s football since the Cup’s inception in 1991
The positive impacts of the tournament and funding for support and development programs for women across the world, has sometimes been obscured by controversies involving the governing body.
BEYOND GREATNESS
The Women’s World Cup has been one of FIFA’s great successes with national women’s teams often out-performing their male counterparts in Cup rankings and wins.
This will be the biggest Women’s tournament with 32 teams competing for the first time, the same number as the men’s tournament in Qatar.
Teams will debut from Morocco, Panama, Portugal, the Republic of Ireland, Vietnam, Philippines and Zambia, reflecting the expanding global quality of women’s football.
NEW CUP MODEL
The tournament has been designed around FIFA’s new “Beyond Greatness” brand and vision for the Cup, promoting the opportunities and benefits provided by football to women in sport and in life.
“The core purpose of the FIFA Women’s World Cup is to showcase women’s talent. Everything we’re trying to achieve for women in football and women in society will be on display for the world to see in Australia and New Zealand,” said Sarai Bareman, FIFA Chief Women’s Football Officer.
Their new approach is also important to moving beyond the corruption plagued era of former president Sepp Blatter, which culminated in crippling scandals over the selection of Russia and Qatar to host the 2018 and 2022 Cups.
The electrifying Argentina-France final rescued Qatar’s tournament but did not wash away the human rights concerns.
While FIFA and others point to improved labour conditions for immigrant workers in Qatar, difficult questions remain over why the lives of workers had to be sacrificed for a sporting event to make work safer in the gulf state.
Tensions over sport’s values, roles and responsibilities in relation to sports washing remain post Qatar, crossing borders and oceans and landing near the playing fields of the Australia and New Zealand Cup.
FIFA was forced to abandon plans for Visit Saudi, the tourism arm of the Saudi Arabian government, to become a major sponsor of the Cup.
The back down followed fierce opposition from the host nations, governments, football federations and leading footballers over Saudi’s human rights record and treatment of women.
The Australia-New Zealand Cup heralds a new Cup era, model and management style under Fifa president Gianni Infantino.
There has been a realisation in FIFA headquarters of lingering impacts on the brand caused by human rights issues in Qatar and circumstances surrounding its selection as host, along with the event’s unprecedented $200 billion price tag, deterring future bidding nations.
It marks the first time the tournament has been staged in the Southern Hemisphere and hosted between two countries.
The current co-hosts were chosen in the wake of reforms led by Infantino to restore credibility to the cup selection process, which can involve presidents, prime ministers and monarchs amid forensic global scrutiny.
The host nations were selected in a more transparent manner that emphasised the technical merits of bid plans for venues, transport, security, accommodation and other key services and facilities to eliminate outside influence and manipulation
“This is the new FIFA, this is the new FIFA we want, this is the new FIFA we stand for,” Infantino enthusiastically declared after Australia and New Zealand were nominated to host the Cup ahead of Columbia in the early stages of the pandemic 2020.
Co-hosting has spread the risks, costs and opportunities from staging the Cup across Australia and New Zealand, with extensive use of existing venues and other infrastructure in both nations containing costs and preventing budget blow outs.
This provides a new model for major international events in the current climate of global uncertainty and government spending cuts.
The split hosting model will be used increasingly under Infantino’s presidency, with the 2026 Men’s Cup shared between, America, Canada and Mexico.
While the treatment of immigrant workers shadowed Qatar, the Women’s World Cup comes at a time of profound introspection in Australia over the extreme health, education, social justice and family disadvantages faced by its indigenous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
The cultures of Australia’s First Nations people – part of the oldest continuing living culture in the world – and Maori people of New Zealand will be fully integrated into the tournament’s milestone moments.
The showcasing will include the presence of indigenous flags at the finals for the first time in a major concession by FIFA to its strict match day protocols to make the tournament as inclusive as possible.
While indigenous recognition will form one of the tournament’s central themes, the history of mistreatment suffered by the First Nations may also its most controversial background issue.
Australia has rallied around the women’s tournament after its previous $32 million tax payer funded government bid secured just one vote in the infamous host nomination process for the 2022 Men’s World Cup awarded to Qatar.
Australia and New Zealand have enthusiastically embraced the tournament as the biggest event to hit the region since the globally-acclaimed Sydney 2000 Olympic Games set new standards for mega sporting event experiences.
FIFA is hoping for an encore mega event that also excites the world.
Much will depend on Australia’s Matildas and the New Zealand Football Ferns to engage their nations and push as far as possible into the tournament.
While distant from football’s epicentres, the Matildas have been shaped by the skills and experiences of several players who have represented some of Europe’s top clubs.
The team will be captained by Sam Kerr, the multi-nominated Ballon d’ Or striker with Chelsea FC and Australia’s first household women’s football star.
The Matildas have been successful against some of the best qualifiers, including a 2-0 friendly win over England in London last April; in front of expected sell out home crowds the team promises to be competitive.
FEVER PITCH
FIFA has already announced that Australia’s opening match against Ireland will switch venue to the 83,500 capacity Stadium Australia, the former main venue for the Sydney Olympics and largest venue for the football tournament, due to high ticket demand.
This will allow up to 100,000 fans to attend the World Cup’s opening games, with the match between co-hosts New Zealand taking place earlier in Auckland.
THE FUTURE IS WOMEN
The tournament is on schedule to become the most attended women’s sporting event ever staged with more than 1 million tickets sold, surpassing the previous tournament record in France in 2019.
“The future is women, thanks to the fans for supporting what will be the greatest FIFA Women’s World Cup ever,” Infantino said earlier this year.
Moving forward, FIFA needs to use funding from the 2023-26 world cup cycle to improve competition and skill levels in Asia, the most populous but least successful footballing continent.
Football cannot be considered a truly global game while China and India, the world’s two biggest nations, remain on the sidelines at Cup finals.
CONCLUSION:
NATION CHANGING FOOTBALL
The scale and grandeur of World Cups can produce nation changing moments.
One of the most powerful: the Japanese women team’s miraculous victory over the United States on penalties in 2011. This followed the fatal underwater earthquake that devasted east Japan, killing thousands.
Reflecting on the importance of the win to a shattered nation, one of the Japan team’s stars, Homare Sawa, said: “We were exhausted, but we kept running…Japan has been hurt, and so many lives have been affected…We cannot change that. But Japan is coming back, and this was our chance to represent our nation.”
“We played the tournament not only for ourselves,” said goalkeeper, Ayumi Kaihori.
“We felt we had not only the support of Japan, but also the whole world.”
With score lines that can mean the difference between national failure or success and triumph or tragedy for teams involved, the World Cup inevitably produces compelling story lines, some of which are already in early draft form.
These include the American team’s historic campaign to become the first to score an unprecedented three consecutive Cup victories.
The team’s chances depend heavily on Megan Rapinoe, America’s once in a generation soccer superstar who will retire after the Cup, creating a story within a story.
Almost as well known for her social activism as her supreme football skills, Rapinoe achieved legend status at the London 2012 Olympic Games after scoring a so-called “Olimpico” goal, directly hitting the back of the net like a missile launched from a corner kick.
History also beckons for the Lionesses to bring the World Cup feeling back to England where, in 1863, the newly formed English Football Association drafted the first Laws of the Game of football.
Hopes are high for an epic final like Qatar but without the controversy. If so, this could be Fifa’s Lucky World Cup.
