Outgoing FA Director of Women’s Football Baroness Sue Campbell launched our 2024-2028 women’s and girls’ strategy by stating “we’ve still got a long way to go”.
Baroness Campbell believes we have made “unbelievable progress” in the last four years, a period during which England won EURO 2022 at Wembley Stadium, but that nobody should rest on their laurels.
The new strategy is made up of four key pillars:
- Build and protect the uniqueness of the women’s game
- Win a major tournament
- Build robust, high-quality competition
- Deliver equal opportunities for women and girls
Weaved within those pillars are five threads: player health and wellbeing, safeguarding, refereeing, coaching, and diversity and inclusion.
Campbell discussed the first of those pillars - Build and protect the uniqueness of the women’s game - as she launched the strategy, saying: “We are incredibly proud of our history and heritage and the work that’s been done on making sure every person who’s represented England has a dedicated cap and number shows how much we value the players.
“The passion, tenacity and commitment towards women’s football hasn’t changed. We now need to spend some time working out exactly what that is and what it looks like. What are the qualities and values that identify the unit? What are we trying to protect here?
“This is not a game that is in the men’s shadows. We have a unique narrative and we stand proud and strong.”
Addressing the second pillar, win a major tournament, was Women’s Technical Director Kay Cossington.
She said: “We want to push the boundaries and keep moving things on and on.
“To win tournaments, we have to develop our talent system. Some of that is through the club system and our Emerging Talent Centres. We’re really proud to have increased the number of players coming into the base pyramid from 2,000, to 4,000, now up to 6,000 plus, which is fantastic, but we need that to be open and accessible.
“The second part of our pathway is what we call the NGB pathway, which is about how we can identify and have self-referrals from any part of the country and the world. I’m really proud that right now the Under-17s team over at the World Cup in the Dominican Republic are really representative of our community. We have players from different ethnicity groups, players from offshore in other countries that we have identified with English eligibility because of the reach.
“We don’t have scouts and coaches scouring the earth like in the men’s game and neither do we want to. What we’re looking at is how we identify young girls and bring them in, help them as individuals, and help them work their way through to becoming a senior Lioness. They all have a unique journey and what we want to get right is that bespoke nature of development.”
Next up, Nick Frith, Women’s Leagues Operations Senior Manager at The FA, discussed the continuing work on building robust, high-quality competitions.
He said: “This part of the game is now a focus of the strategy because of the great work that’s happened over the last two iterations of our strategies. We’ve got more people playing than ever before and they need somewhere to play. For those who want to pursue playing at a higher level, we need to give them competitions, and for those wanting to watch the game, we need to have compelling competitions.
“We want to drive standards of the clubs, setting the bar higher but also helping them achieve it. We also need to make sure we get the right financial support for those running all competitions to ensure they are sustainable. Finally, we need to keep reviewing the glue that holds it all together – the competitions themselves, whether they’re the right size, promotion and relegation numbers, and the geographical spread of the competitions.”
Finally, Lou Gear, Head of Development, addressed the fourth major pillar, delivering equal opportunities for women and girls.
She said: “We stand by our commitment to achieve true equality, not just in schools but in community football as well. We’ve got lots of building blocks to put in place. We’ve made huge progress – 77% of our schools nation-wide are providing exactly the same opportunity for girls to play football in PE as boys. That’s 2.5 million girls with equal access to curriculum time.
“However, there is still work to do. In secondary schools, that figure drops to 54% and we will seek out new ways to engage 14-16-year-olds. We will continue to work with the government to secure robust school infrastructure and by 2028 there will be more turn-up-and-play small-sided walking football sessions for women than ever before.
“The playing field is nowhere near level yet and we will continue to lay strong foundations for all women and girls to participate.”
You can read the strategy in full here.
