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Women’s Football vs Qatar: The Club World Cup Dilemma
- Amelie Kirk
- Feb 18
- 3 min read
What is the Women’s Club World Cup?
In 2028, FIFA plans to stage the first Women’s Club World Cup, a 16-team global tournament bringing together champion clubs from each confederation. It is designed to be a landmark moment for the women’s game, a recognition that domestic leagues and continental competitions have matured into something commercially viable and culturally powerful.
On paper, it is overdue. Women’s football has grown at extraordinary speed. Attendances are rising, broadcast deals are improving and players are more visible than ever. A global club competition signals that the sport is no longer an afterthought, but the inaugural host matters as it sets the tone for everything that follows.
Qatar’s women’s football reality
Reports suggest Qatar is in talks with FIFA to host the first edition. The country has the stadiums and the infrastructure from the 2022 men’s World Cup. Logistically, it is prepared, yet Qatar’s own relationship with women’s football is thin. The national women’s team has not played an official competitive match since 2014 and is currently unranked by FIFA. There is no sustained professional domestic league feeding into elite competition and no long-standing culture of women’s club football that would connect this global spectacle to everyday sporting life. Hosting a flagship tournament without a functioning domestic ecosystem risks reducing the women’s game to a temporary showcase rather than a rooted, growing sport.
Why Qatar shouldn't host
This is not simply a question of facilities. Women’s football has evolved alongside feminist politics and LGBTQ+ visibility. Many of its leading players are openly queer and our supporter culture prides itself on being more inclusive and more politically conscious than the men’s game. Qatar criminalises same-sex relationships. Women’s legal status remains shaped by guardianship structures and discriminatory laws. Those realities create tension with the public identity of the women’s game.
If a tournament celebrates empowerment while being staged in a country where a large percentage of players and fans are criminalised, that contradiction cannot be brushed aside as cultural difference. It becomes a question of coherence. What does empowerment mean if it is selectively applied?
There is also the issue of safety and expression. Would players feel able to speak openly about their identities? Would pride symbols be protected? Would fans travel knowing their rights are restricted? These are not abstract concerns. They affect who participates and how freely they can exist. Some argue that hosting can encourage reform, that engagement is better than isolation. That may be true in certain contexts, but meaningful change requires legal guarantees and structural commitment, not simply a month of global attention.
As a lesbian in a same-sex relationship, this is not theoretical for me. It is personal. I would not travel to Qatar for this tournament. I would boycott it, not as a gesture, but because I would not feel safe. I would feel anxious for some of my favourite players, especially those who are openly queer, knowing they could be competing in a country where their identities are criminalised.
Women’s football has been a rare space where many of us have felt seen and protected. To ask players and fans to enter an environment where that safety cannot be guaranteed feels like a betrayal of the community that built this sport. If the tournament is awarded on the basis of money and infrastructure alone, it risks signalling that commercial gain outweighs the lived realities, dignity and security of women and LGBTQ+ people who give the game its meaning.
Other options and why this matters
There has been no confirmed public bidding process, yet there are obvious alternatives. Countries with established professional leagues that have the infrastructure, fanbases and lived women’s football cultures to host a tournament of this scale. Awarding the inaugural edition to a nation where the women’s game is already thriving would create continuity between grassroots participation and elite spectacle. It would leave a real legacy rather than a symbolic one.
Because this is about more than a new trophy. The first Women’s Club World Cup will signal what the women’s game values as it expands. If equality, visibility and dignity are central to its identity, those principles must guide its biggest decisions. Commercial leverage and political alliances cannot be the only measures that matter. Women’s football was built by players and supporters who carved out space where none existed. The question now is whether those in power will protect that history or trade it at the first opportunity.
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