What women coaches think of FIFA’s new quota rule: ‘It needs to give someone a real chance to work’

What women coaches think of FIFA’s new quota rule: ‘It needs to give someone a real chance to work’

Mariana Cabral can reel off the list with little fuss: Sarina Wiegman, Emma Hayes, Renee Slegers, Sonia Bompastor. Women who have lifted major trophies as head coaches in the past two years.

“It’s not like women aren’t good,” the Chicago Stars assistant manager says. “But right now, they have to be, because they’re the exception to the rule. They made it.

She adds that women are not afforded the same space to make mistakes and learn as their male counterparts.

“Gender does not determine the competence of a person,” says Cabral. “I hope we can all agree on that. But because men are so overly represented in this situation, we need to help the women get into these positions.”

Of the National Women’s Soccer League’s 16 head coaches, just four are women. It is the same number in the 12-team Women’s Super League. At the club level globally, only 22 per cent of coaches are female. At the FIFA Women’s World Cup in  2023, just 38 per cent (12 of 32) of head coaches were women; six teams did not employ any female coaches; and only nine of those teams have women employed as head coaches today. According to the 2023 FIFA Member Association Survey, female coaches accounted for just five per cent of all registered coaches worldwide.

Last summer’s European Championship had a record seven of the 16 qualified teams led by women, but there is still ongoing systemic underrepresentation in top coaching positions. 

In an attempt to remedy the issue, FIFA announced a new coaching mandate last month. It requires all teams in women’s tournaments — youth to senior, club to national — to employ at least one female head coach or assistant coach on their staff, along with two female officials to be seated on the bench and one female member of medical staff.

A team would not have to sacrifice a male coach in order to make room for a female coach, and teams can have more than one assistant. The new regulations will be stipulated in competition participant agreements to incentivise an additional role for a female coach.

The quota-based initiative is bold and predominantly welcomed by the women’s coaching ecosystem.

“If transformational change is to occur, there probably does need to be a mandate,” says Manisha Tailor, a former youth manager with Queens Park Rangers who is now working as a women’s coach developer and under-19s manager in Asia. “But alongside the mandate, there also needs to be conversations around what that looks like in terms of how we’re going to get there.”

Tailor’s sentiments echo some of the uncertainty felt by coaches around the implementation of FIFA’s new rules.

Structural barriers, limited access to professional pathways, costly course fees, and restricted progression opportunities have constrained the development and advancement of women in coaching, as well as the fact that, historically, all coach educators have been men.

The mandate does not directly address these issues, though there is understanding within FIFA and from coaches that without deliberate regulatory action, progress in this space would be glacial.

“As strong an initiative as this is — it grows the game for so many reasons — we need to really put that lens on continuing to build underneath,” says Leah Blayney, a former Japan assistant manager who helped Japan to win the 2026 Asian Cup last month.

Ensuring that the mandate enforces federations and decision-makers to reckon with these barriers to access is paramount, some coaches say. The concern is a mandate that encourages federations to panic-track women to the required positions, creating a carousel of the same faces.

“We have a saying at the Stars,” says Cabral. “Sometimes we’re treating the symptoms, but not the actual cause of things. The hope is this doesn’t do that.”

One of the key stress points for Cabral is accessing coaching courses — particularly A-licenses and pro-licenses, which are becoming regular qualifications for assistant and head coach positions, respectively, in the women’s game.

Despite a history of working with senior women’s teams at Benfica and Sporting CP, as well as being an assistant coach at NWSL sides Utah Royals and now Chicago Stars, Cabral has struggled to gain access to the pro licence courses.

According to UEFA, the number of female coaches with UEFA C, B, A, or pro licence rose to 25,000 in 2024, an increase of more than 75 per cent in eight years.

Yet, as the demand for these courses has increased across Europe for both men and women coaches, the available spaces have remained the same, leading to oversubscription and bottlenecks, regardless of gender.

The added layers of cost and time create more obstacles, says Tailor. Courses can cost upwards of £14,000, not including travel or accommodation.

“Also, what days are the courses on?” asks Tailor. “Can people take time off jobs if you’ve got childcare, which makes it really tricky.”

The oversubscription has led to more rigorous admission criteria, particularly for the pro license, says Cabral. Yet, often, experience in men’s football, even in lower club divisions, is prioritised over experience in women’s club football, she says.

“What we don’t want to happen, which happens a lot, is that the coaches go in through the younger national teams, and because they’re in the federation, they get special spots in the licences because the federation just puts them inside,” she says. “That then solves the problem for the federations because they get these people from here and push them up and get them into licences.

“But those coaches in the leagues and in clubs can’t get in.”

FIFA’s purview does not include coaching qualifications. Rather, these coaching courses and pathways fall into the remits of confederations themselves. But more organisations are attempting to address the clog, such as the Mollie and Rosie Kmita Powerhouse Project.

FIFA, too, has announced initiatives over the past decade to help, from encouraging member associations and clubs to invest in female coach development via various grant programs to making inclusion part of the requisites for competitions. Their education scholarship program has supported 795 female coaches from 73 member associations. The new FIFA Champions Cup Coach Legacy Scholarship, in partnership with the FA and WSL, will offer funding for 26 coaches pursuing the UEFA A and UEFA Pro Diplomas.

UEFA coaching courses require 10 per cent of places to be reserved for appropriately qualified female coaches. Meanwhile, their Coach Development Programme for Women, launched in 2016, offers candidates seeking coaching licenses financial support and scholarships, with more than 1,600 women who have gained a coaching licence through the programme.

In 2023, UEFA also launched its women’s football competence framework, seeking to make courses more inclusive and attractive for female coaches and enhance the visibility of women’s football within coach education programmes.

There is an understanding amongst coaches and decision-makers that holistic change will require patience.

But Blayney also emphasises the necessity for coaches to seek experience at the foundational levels of the game as they pursue the higher echelons of coaching in order to be qualified.

“That opportunity below is so important in setting women up to succeed because I don’t think we set women up the same way as men to succeed in the development pathway,” she says.

The former Australian international has attended multiple Asian Cups as a player and then as a youth coach and head coach with Australia’s under-20s before working with Japan as an assistant coach. But she has also spent time working with various development sides across the gender gap in the early stages of her career.

She says the experience working in front of people in the field, getting them to buy into what you are saying is invaluable, and that much of that growth comes from opportunities at the foundational levels.

“It only happens through previous experiences. That’s key. You can’t put somebody in (a position), and the playing group are automatically going to say, ‘we’re on board’,” Blayney says. “There has to be a level of opportunity that’s already got them elevated in the playing group’s mind of being good at what they do.”

Natalie Henderson, the first female coach to work in a men’s Premier League academy and now a San Diego Wave assistant, was only afforded an opportunity at Newcastle United men’s academy because then academy manager Joe Joyce took, she says, a “risk” on her.

In 2013 the Premier League launched an initiative called ECAS, the Elite Coach Apprenticeship Scheme, to help promote female coaches and those from different backgrounds. There were two women of around 20 coaches in Henderson’s cohort.

That scheme allowed her to go full-time at Newcastle. Without such an initiative she may have never had a foundation to build upon. From Newcastle she became head coach of England women’s under-17 youth team and Canada women’ assistant coach.

Likewise, Tailor’s CV follows a similar blueprint. Having worked with Middlesex Girls Centre of Excellence, the England Women’s Under-15s and Tottenham Hotspur Women’s College Under-21s, she was hired as a part-time academy coach at Queens Park Rangers working under former technical director and head of coaching Chris Ramsey after completing her UEFA B License in 2015. Tailor expresses gratitude to Ramsey, whom she describes as “taking a chance on her” and being invested in her development.

During her time at the London club, Tailor applied for the A-licence but was unsuccessful, partly because of oversubscription.

“But also, actually, Chris told them not to put me on because I wasn’t ready,” she says.

“At the time, we argued, but looking back, I always say it’s the best thing he did. Unfortunately for women, if you’re working within a male space, you get unpicked more. His thing was, it’s not about elevating you straight away. He then put me on a year-long proper development plan. The next time I applied, I got on, and I felt prepared.”

Since then, Tailor’s CV has come to span from grassroots to professional and international football. She has since been accepted onto the FA’s pro-license course on her second time of asking.

The trajectories of Henderson, Blayney and Tailor offer a proof of concept for FIFA’s mandate. A misconception upon the mandate’s initial release was that underqualified coaches would be pushed into positions to fill quotas.

“The FIFA initiative provides the platform, but then as female coaches we have to make sure we are qualified enough to do a good job, not just survive but thrive,” says Henderson.

In this way, Tailor considers the assistant manager’s position as the more compelling access point for aspiring coaches.

For those struggling to get onto a pro-licence course, for example, acquiring an assistant manager’s role at international level better qualifies the candidate in the next round of applications, while also providing the experience of international football.

“I can’t do any more after (the pro license) in terms of trying to get some form of opportunity,” Tailor says. “I have the credibility foundation, I’m getting the qualification. Now we have the mandate. I definitely see the pathway now.

“You can have the qualifications and experience in the club game or elite football, but you may not have international coaching experience. I look at this mandate, and I go, ‘Well, that’s now going to give those who are qualified who work with elite players access to that space.’”

In countries where access for women to high-ranking positions can feel stilted due to cultural norms, this more visible pathway feels even more consequential.

“Making me senior (women’s) head coach was not a very easy decision for our FA, especially in my country,” says Lidija Stojkanovic, who took the Serbia job in January 2025 after spending numerous years in the youth system. Stojkanovic guided Serbia to an historic promotion to League A in the Nations League and was named Serbia’s coach of the year in December, the first time a woman has won the honour.

“I’m definitely more focused on the methods of how this will be applied in real life because, from my experience, it’s not easy. It takes hard work, learning, and proving yourself in environments that are not always equal for everyone,” adds Stojkanovic, who says she benefitted from gaining a scholarship from UEFA before entering into a FIFA mentorship programme under former Japan national team head coach Nils Nielsen.

“What matters most is it should not just be about making a rule, but about giving someone a real chance to work, to lead teams, to gain experience, and be part of decision making and coaching,” she says. “Without real support and trust, this could easily become only a formality.”

Henderson is clear on striking a balance between acknowledging the lack of female representation, but not closing the door to male coaches either.

Similarly, on courses, she does not want to see a separation between male and female coaches, emphasizing the benefits of learning from one another.

“We need to be careful we don’t go too far,” she says. “We need the right people in the right jobs, whether they’re male or female. We should not now exclude male coaches who could bring real knowledge and experience to the women’s game.”

Henderson has been called a “tick box” in the past. “There is no shying away from that,” she says. “Great! That tick box helped me get in the building and once I’m in I’m going to show you I’m good enough.”

Many of the women spoken to for this piece believe the intention behind the mandate transcends tokenism, but the practical application must do so too.

“When transformational decisions like that are made, it can only have real cultural impact if there are support mechanisms in place,” Tailor says. “If those employers or recruiters don’t (do that), and it’s just because of a mandate, we’ll still be in this same cycle (where) unless you’re in the inner circle, opportunities are very few.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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