International plans for 2026-29 will eat into opportunities for professional leagues around the world to develop and prosper
When I played international football for the Matildas, it was seen as a costly and curious side-hobby. We worked full-time and trained most nights. If I needed strapping or ice, I applied it myself. We paid to play in tournaments and take part in training camps. Business class was something you studied after high school if you wanted an office job.
During the Australia v England World Cup semi-final last year – which became Australia’s highest rating TV program in any genre – the contrast could not have been greater. The class of ’23 stepped into the cauldron and put on an unforgettable, high-octane show. The difference? Unlike my generation, these players all came from professional clubs and leagues, living in a training environment with coaching, conditioning, recovery, nutrition and psychology support that we could only dream of (not to mention actual wages).
The difference has been transformative. Training with the best each day yields improvement that, in a team sport, compounds across clubs and leagues. The rising quality of the football has escalated audience interest and boosted commercial revenues. This, in turn, funds greater professionalism and the game continues on upward trend.
The benefits are global. Whatever their country of origin, aspiring players can see that there is a professional destination. Their national team benefits as well. Rather than plucking talent from amateur football in the hope they can stretch to new heights, national coaches can harvest professionally trained footballers from elite environments. Nowhere was this more obvious than at the most recent Women’s World Cup, where more than half of the 736 players hailed from six top leagues. Many squads featured key players drawn from professional clubs outside their country.
It is very clear we have passed a tipping point, where the professional clubs in national leagues are now biggest accelerators of quality and value in the women’s game. National teams are no longer the main pathway for elite players. Instead of a few dozen players in each country’s national squad, we see hundreds in each national league developing in professional clubs and their academies, development systems and talent management infrastructure.
That said, major international tournaments provide a crucial showcase to attract new audiences, with peaks of visibility and promotion. This symbiosis between professional clubs and national teams creates obvious opportunities to optimise growth through cooperation. This is particularly so via the international match calendar, a list of dates set by Fifa when clubs must release their players for national team competitions. It essentially determines the balance between national and international football.
As a consultant to the Women’s Leagues Forum, a global platform of professional women’s national leagues, I hear consistently from the leagues that there are two imperatives the calendar needs must address. First, given that professional women’s leagues are in their early stages securing a roadmap to financial sustainability must be priority. Clubs need to justify and increase investments (to narrow the whopping gender pay gap, among other things) and leagues need a fixture list of a length and consistency that will attract revenues to fund professionalism.
The main income sources – media rights, commercial sponsorships and partnerships, ticketing, hospitality and concessions – all hinge upon match days. A regular competition calendar with a sellable number of matches is crucial to the financial success of clubs and leagues.
Second, the players are at breaking point. They are the leagues’ biggest assets, but increased demands have resulted in a proliferation of debilitating injuries. Balancing the calendar is an exercise that requires the greatest care and diligence. While some may suffer overload, non-international players are at risk of underload when international breaks pause their competitions.
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If Fifa thought these were priorities it is not evident in their new calendar for 2026–2029, which has confiscated 33% more weekends for regular international “windows”. It does this by giving with one hand (abolishing one window) while taking more with the other (most of remaining windows will take two weekends – half a month of regular fixtures – instead of one). This will happen each November, February and April, giving schedulers a new headache, especially those playing during the northern winter.
Fifa’s expansion into more weekends also means that more league games are likely to be forced midweek. Will stadiums be available? Will the fans travel midweek? Can the broadcasters schedule it? Additionally, one or two large chunks of the year are set aside as “blocked periods” for national team tournaments. For women, it’s not just the World Cup and the Confederation championships; there’s also the Olympics and its final round qualifiers.
Tournaments can be notified in these blocks up until 18-24 months before they are played. Fifa has granted itself and its Confederations a generous degree of flexibility, rather like reserving lots of tables in a restaurant because you and your guests haven’t yet decided where to sit. Very convenient for the guests, but not so nice for everyone else who’d like to eat.
In 2026, the first “blocked period” stretches for six weeks from February to April, sandwiched between a new Women’s Club World Cup in January/February, and a regular window that takes half of the weekends in April. It’s hard to see how the leagues can maintain rhythm and momentum in these conditions.
For women’s football to thrive, the professional leagues must be able to prosper. Without a commercially sustainable competition format, league revenues will be stifled, investor confidence chilled and professionalism relegated to the slow lane.
While Fifa exercises multiple roles as the regulator setting the calendar, the commercial competition owner and the political entity whose voting members benefit from calendar-related revenues, it is easy to perceive its decisions as conflicted. In order to avoid this, Fifa must open a genuine dialogue with all affected stakeholders and treat other competition organisers with no less favour than itself.
Moya Dodd played for Australia between 1986 and 1995 and is a former Fifa ExCo/Council member
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