T
here’s a point in football where the conversation shifts. Not in press releases. Not in announcements. But inside the game, where those closest to it feel the gap before anyone else names it.
This week, FIFA moved to increase the number of female coaches operating at the highest levels of the game. On paper, it’s about pathways — coaching education, licensing, development structures. In reality, it’s about something more fundamental. Access.
For years, the women’s game has been measured by visibility. More players, more coverage, more voices in the studio. That progress matters. But football doesn’t run on visibility. It runs on influence. And influence sits elsewhere; in coaching rooms, in technical areas, in the spaces where decisions are made and careers are shaped. That’s the gap Eni Aluko has been pointing to. Not always comfortably, and at times delivered in ways that distracted from the substance, but the core argument has held. The focus on punditry has often missed the point. This was never about the studio. It’s about the architecture of the game itself. Who is developed. Who is trusted. And ultimately, who leads. The issue was never visibility. It was progression, that’s where the game has been slow.
For decades, elite coaching hasn’t just been about ability. It has depended on proximity, who you know, where you’ve been, and whether you’ve been brought into the right rooms at the right time. Those pathways have been narrow. And they’ve favoured the same profiles, repeatedly. Not simply through habit, but through a system that has long reinforced itself, quietly, consistently, and without challenge.
What FIFA’s latest move signals is a recognition of that reality. Not a symbolic adjustment, but an attempt to widen the pathway itself, to embed female coach development into the system, rather than position it alongside it. This isn’t about numbers. It’s about distribution; of opportunity, of responsibility, of trust. And that’s where the real test sits. Football doesn’t change through frameworks alone, it changes through decisions; who gets the badge, who gets the role, who is backed when it matters.
For emerging football nations, particularly across Africa, this moment carries weight. The growth of the women’s game has created momentum. The question now is whether that momentum converts into leadership, more women shaping the game, not just participating in it. That has always been the argument, and it’s why this moment matters.
Football has not lacked capable women. It has lacked open pathways. Eni Aluko did not invent that reality. She recognised it early, and said it out loud.
