US and UK World Cup bid success boosts hosts but does little for global game

The Guardian

04-04-2025

There is an abundance of reasons why staging the 2031 and 2035 Women's World Cups in the United States and UK respectively offers cause for delight. The countries have well-established and emotionally invested fanbases, a genuine buy-in to the women's game and huge, modern stadiums to choose from. These two summer parties will surely eclipse anything women's sport has seen and the countries, having invested in the women's game more than any others in modern times, have frankly earned this.
Yet the news that the US and UK are bidding unopposed to host these tournaments is also sad for the women's game from a global perspective. The US's NWSL and England's Women's Super League are the two most-watched women's leagues in the world with the largest average attendances and the most professionalised facilities for players and therefore, while many will agree that means they deserve the Women's World Cup the most, they are also the countries who need the tournament the least.
The event has never been staged in Africa and it is dispiriting that the earliest that could change and have a turbocharging effect on the women's football ecosystem in at least one African country is 2039. Not dissimilarly, China is the only Asian nation to have hosted the Women's World Cup. The sight of Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president, announcing in relatively low-key fashion on Thursday that the US (with 'potentially some other Concacaf nations') and UK would host those tournaments should disappoint the rest of the world, if our hope is to see more domestic leagues turn professional, more national federations up their game and more girls receive equal access to sport.
Of course, there is a balance to be struck. For players and fans, you want the tournament to offer the greatest available venues, facilities and host cities, where you can guarantee the kind of atmosphere experienced when England hosted the Women's Euros in 2022. Offer players a choice between playing a World Cup match in California, with its hotbed of passionate NWSL fans and recent swathe of rich investors, or in a country with an amateur women's football setup without any such aura, and they would surely have no hesitation.
There is also a lot to be said for the idea that, by putting on the greatest show possible, Fifa's tournaments will inspire women and girls across the planet regardless of whether this is on their doorstep.
But for nobody else to fancy a crack at it? Not even to make a valid bid? What a shame, and what a poor indictment of the passion levels for women's football within the federations and governments of all other eligible hosts, with the exceptions of South America, where the tournament is heading – with great anticipation – in 2027 to Brazil, and Australia & New Zealand, who put on a memorable show in 2023.
Yes, there will be a nice element of nostalgia for the US in 2031, hosting the tournament 40 years after they won the first Women's World Cup, in China. Plus, the US's gamechanging staging of the 1999 tournament was surely the most iconic so far. In 2031, it is expected to co-host with Mexico, where the domestic women's league is blossoming in promising fashion.
However, this will be the third time the US has hosted the Women's World Cup, from 11 tournaments. That presents a risk that the strongest women's football nation will only keep strengthening and leave others far behind.
More pertinently, assuming – as expected – Fifa officially approves the US as host at a congress meeting next year, from a women's rights perspective that should not pass without controversy, the US being one of relatively few places where it is illegal for millions of women to have an abortion.
The UK is hardly a perfect country either. At least it has 10 years to sort out the abysmal train system that fans from around the world will rely on. And HS2 will be finished by then, right? Will it? Really? Allegedly.
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The overwhelming feeling about these two tournaments should be hugely positive. The idea of a transformational impact on the women's game in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales is music to the ears. The four UK Football Associations appear to have played something of a blinder, diplomatically, to reach this stage. By 2035, given the rapid growth of the women's game in the past 10 years, who is to say where things will be?
What of the UK's stadiums? Venues could include New Trafford, a 60,000-seat ground in the proposed sports quarter in Birmingham, a modernised St James' Park or new Newcastle stadium and an expanded Racecourse Ground in Wrexham. These are things that players including those in the England under-19s team who were 6-0 winners over Belgium in a European qualifier on Wednesday, and who will be in their late 20s when this tournament comes around, should be incredibly motivated by.
Be in no doubt, these tournaments in 2031 and 2035 will have the power to do great things for women's sport. It is just regrettable that nobody else fancied a go.
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