8 would be fine, but I think having just four confeds represented defeats the point of being a Club World Cup. TBQH I'm kinda surprised that they're trying to reinvent the wheel here. They already have a workable format for the men's CWC, so why the big push to do something different here?
Instead of CWC it's gonna be World League of Selections (starting 2020) 16 members, 4 regional divisions (AFC&OFC, UEFA, CONCACAF&CONMEBOL, CAF) with best 4 teams from each playing in Elite Division. Annual format supposedly to force federations and clubs to invest in women’s football. http://www.womenssoccerunited.com/fifa-plans-world-womens-league-of-selections-from-2020/
I am curious to see where those games will fit around the Euros and World Cup qualifiers, they must surely remove the March tournaments...
Well, at least OFC is not an independent division (it wouldn't have made any sense, under current situation, as I pointed out multiple times). On the other hand, "16 members, 4 regional division" means 4 members each? CAF getting the same teams as CONCACAF + CONMEBOL combined? I can understand geographical equity, but CAF women's club football just simply isn't there with the rest of the field right now!
This will be an... interesting experiment, to say the least. Especially with how the shifting between Elite and Regional will happen with the already-established UEFA and CONMEBOL tournaments. Will four UEFA teams get selected for the Elite Division and then NOT participate in the UWCL, so that the pro/rel happens between the worst Elite team and the new UWCL champion? Because if all four Elite teams do continue participating in the UWCL, what happens if all four make the SFs? What happens if only ONE makes the SFs? Or is the entire qualifying process simply the four UWCL SFs always make the Elite tournament? If so, then what was all that about being the worst being downgraded to local games? And there's no way CONCACAF and CONMEBOL decide to have a single pan-American club tournament, so when one team is bumped from the Elite division each year, who replaces them? Or, again, do regional tournaments exactly serves as qualifiers, in which case the easy answer would be the two finalists from each North and South? Because then I'm still confused about the demotion to local games thing. It's a good thing that they're gonna wait until 2020 to do this since there are a LOT of questions to be answered here. (And I STILL don't get why they didn't just go with what already works for the men's CWC.)
I'm not so sure if it ain't...remeber they are talkin about teams from 4 African countries at most for now. Looking back to WWC 2015 and to African NT's playing in there - it's not like those teams had all their 23 players playing exlusively in top western or eastern leagues only. I'd guess Nigerian, Cameroon's, South African and Ghanean(?) leagues aren't so far behind an average. And with money that are lately starting to show more in WoSo there they will catch up. An example from....Tanzania - last year Serengeti Breweries signed a sponsorship deal (200 000$) for their Women's League. I mean there are still quite a few leagues in Europe without sponsorship...
Ah, that makes MUCH more sense - especially with the UEFA and CONCACAF Leagues of Nations starting up soon, I guess it makes sense for trying to create something similar on the women's side.
An interesting point I've seen mentioned on Twitter: By adding another NT competition to the calendar, this is effectively squeezing club competitions even further down the priority list. Even if this does replace the March tournaments, the official annual emphasis on NTs is gonna mean that any player not in her coutnry's top 25 or so is gonna get further left behind if more money is funneled into the NT scene and away from the club scene. That's not gonna help development like they're advertising it will. Yes, it'll likely stop teams from slipping in and out of the rankings due to not playing a single NT game for nearly three years, but....
I just want to be on record saying this idea by FIFA is terrible. It's a gimmick to look like they're promoting the women's game when really it would hurt it.
No change on the country international tournaments, the FIFA council did not validate any of those bizzare proposed ideas. FIFA’s strategic body agreed, in principle, that there was a crucial need to support women’s football and to strengthen the existing scenario of international women’s competitions. However, further to the consultation phase that led to the proposal of a FIFA Women’s World League by the FIFA administration, the FIFA Council decided that the matter required further examination and should be revisited in the body’s upcoming meetings. After discussing the pros and cons of adopting a different strategy for the future of international youth competitions, the FIFA Council decided to stick to the existing structure of biennial U-17 and U-20 tournaments for both men and women.
Can I say I am relieved about both decisions? In principle it's true that women's football would need as much support as possible, so apparently one should be disappointed that FIFA decided to do nothing and to stick to the status quo, but, as much as @Airox, I was persuaded that neither of those ideas was better than what we have today for the development of women's football. - As it was correctly pointed out, it's women's club football that would need some support, so, instead of another competition for NTs, FIFA should implement some kind of World Cup for clubs. FIFA's idea of another official competition for NTs would have probably damaged club level and women's football in general. - Merging U-17 and U-20 into one competition was the craziest idea of them all: far from developing women's football it was a choice that was screaming "randomly cutting some women's football competitions beacuse we feel they're dead wood"! I am happy that both our youth competition get to stay, because I feel youth football is the most lively sector of women's football and reducing playing chances and exposure for these girls would have really meant undermining the foundations of the whole building!
I really hope that FIFA will work on organising a club world cup, the only problem for me is finding dates in a very busy calendar.
Again, I say: no reason to reinvent the wheel. The men already work well with a 1-week tournament in December, and there isn't anything vastly different about the women's and men's club schedules, so I would think that should work for the women too. The only potential problem I see with that is NWSL, and only because North America is the only continent where a different schedule defines the continent's dominant league between the men and the women (and, in particular, the players aren't paid for December in NWSL). In every other continent, the countries that dominate the men's game are generally the same as those that dominate the women's game, and thus have relatively matching schedules.
Revisiting this! After absolutely nothing on the UNCAF site since October of last year, they suddenly post this weekend the results of the first three(!) matchdays of the 2018 tournament, followed two days later by the results of the semis and finals: http://uncafut.com/index.php/futbol-femenino/femenino-interclubes ...which results in a tournament that looked like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_UNCAF_Women's_Interclub_Championship Two-time defending champions Moravia of CRC were defeated by the inagugual runners-up Unifut Rosal of GUA. Also, holy hell did Moravia come close to not making it back to a third successive final - they "won" their semifinal in a shootout 14-13! I think the original tournament had 80-minute games, but this year it looks like 70-minute games, so that's a little odd. Anyway, I mentioned it before, but I really want CONCACAF to take this tournament and build from it to create a CONCACAF-wide club tournament. Add the CFU champion, one rep from each of the three NAFU nations, and a title-holder slot, and you'd have a 12-team tournament!
Apparently AFC is going to be having a presidential election soon? IDK much about it - maybe our Asian posters can add some more perspective - but I'm only becoming aware of it now b/c I saw a tiny mention somewhere that there might be an AFC Women's CL coming soon, at least if one candidate (Al-Romaithi) gets to realize his agenda. Thoughts, anyone?
FIFA recently published their 4 years calendar up to December 2023 and place for a women club WC in it sadly
I think that Women's CL in AFC is in the works from some time now - to many different sources talks about it. I heard it first time in late 2017 or was it early 2018 from POL U-19's coach who was at WoSo UEFA symposium where supposedly Wiegman and few others people from UEFA had mentioned it. Then again it surfaced around AFC Cup in April last year. Executive Committee Member Moya Dodd is a big proponent of this and she is pushing for it to happen. It was even mentioned in passing on twitter during CONCACAF WWC qual by people from some coaching staff. ...as for the elections, after an hour of reading into - it's only my guessing here: Alromathi (UAE) is pushing from Executive Comittee Member chair - a general, with a lot of political connections, who is aiming high (that's his only candidature - would he lose - he's out of AFC) I guess either is he having an ace in the hole or he will be ousted by his own people (there is other candidate from UAE for his chair in Comittee) and he is trying hmm...hail Mary? Al-Mohannadi (Qatar) seem practical man. Sitting in chair of vice-President he throws his candidacy for: AFC president, FIFA Council member and for vice-President from West Zone (his chair now) I'd say he is about $$$ - well...all those FA's have money but his bag is probably the biggest. His chances would be high if it wasn't for memory of former Qatari president - Bin Hammam - banned for life by FIFA in 2011. ....which brings Sheikh Salman ben Ebrahim Al-Khalifa (Bahrain) current President - a man who has done a succesfull clean-up after Bin Hammam.He is seeking his 3rd term in office. Known quality for all delegates and with support from them it would seem as he forced his rival Adel Ezzat (Saudia Arabia) to withdraw his candidacy after leading SAFF members to vote to withdraw from Saudi sponsored SWAFF. My moneys on him.
I figured that's what you meant. =-) Also, I still don't think it means much to a lack of something in a planned calendar, especially so far out. I'd love to know how far in advance the men's CWC was planned, of course - but considering the tournament should only take a week or so (if they keep the current men's CWC format) then I don't see how it would be too difficult to squeeze it in somewhere. Of course, what the lack of presence in the calendar means is that any discussions about a women's CWC - if there even are any at the moment - aren't very far along. Which is criminal considering FIFA touted a focus group to create a women's CWC over two years ago now.
You don't need any FIFA days for a club WC. FIFA days are when clubs are not allowed to stop players from playing for the national teams. So any days that are not FIFA days will work fine for a Club WC. If it causes problem for some leagues they just have to find a way to cope.
Bumping this thread with the news of an AFC club championship Since it's currently just four clubs from just four countries - all East Asian - it feels more like an invitational/friendly tournament, but at least it's officially sanctioned by AFC and all champions, so that's nice. Certainly hope that it grows more soon. Maybe starting next year, it'll be an 8-team tournament: -4 champions from the "big four" East Asian countries as above -1 defending champion -3 extra slots (teams from across AFC can apply for these slots in 2020, and then maybe for 2021 there can be a formal qualifying tournament - then the tournament expands again in 2022).