Our Board met on 29 and 30 April, and set out below are the main discussion points.
The women’s professional leagues are now managed by Women’s Super League Football Limited. The Board heard from their CEO, Nikki Doucet, Chair, Dawn Airey and The FA’s Director of Women’s Football, Sue Day, on the plans being developed to grow and develop the leagues to fulfil the purpose of creating the best and most competitive women’s leagues in the world.
We have submitted an expression of interest to FIFA in hosting the 2035 FIFA World Cup in partnership with the Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish and Irish Football Associations. Sue Day and our Director of Tournaments & Events, Chris Bryant, took us through the practicalities of putting together the bid documents so that we are ready to submit them to FIFA by the deadline in November 2025.
Our National Game Board has been leading on a review of how we deliver grassroots football through our County FA network. Our Director of Football Development, James Kendall, and Baroness Sue Campbell took us through what the National Game Board has agreed in reshaping the delivery of the grassroots game and putting County FAs at the heart of the development of football locally. The Board was fully supportive of the proposals.
Our England Men’s Senior Team will hopefully qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico. While we don’t take qualification for granted, we do need to consider ahead of time the logistics of where to locate the team and travel to and from stadia if we were to qualify. Our Technical Director, John McDermott, presented on some of the logistical challenges and issues we need to consider.
As the Football Governance Bill makes its way through the parliamentary process, we need to consider the role and operations of the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) within the men’s professional game. The Bill gives the IFR the objectives of ensuring financial resilience, the sustainability of clubs and the protection of heritage assets and our Director of Communications, Marketing and Public Affairs, Joanna Manning-Cooper, led a discussion on how The FA, Premier League, EFL and National League will relate to the IFR once it is in place.
The Board discussed legal advice relating to our Transgender Policy following the Supreme Court’s ruling on 16 April. In light of this, we changed the policy which means that transgender women will no longer be able to play in women’s football in England with effect from 1 June 2025. This change was published on 1 May.
We received an update from our Chief Medical Officer, Dr Charlotte Cowie, on both the current and planned research being undertaken on brain health in football and related matters including concussion management and heading training guidance.
Our Company Secretary, Richard McDermott, presented to the Board on a couple of issues we would like to progress as part of the next evolution of our corporate governance. The first of these was the principle of appointing Independent Chairs to the main sub-Board and committees which manage the game and comprise various football stakeholders and the second element was to be clear what we mean by the term “independent” so that we can apply this consistently across our governance framework.
The next Board meeting is in July 2025.
