Football’s governing body takes big step to support women players properly

FIFA is stepping up in a big way by launching a free online library packed with 30 short courses that anyone connected to women’s football can study. Players, parents, coaches, doctors, even whole national federations – they can all log in, pick a topic like sleep or strength training, and finish a mini-course in their own time. The idea isn’t just to share facts; it’s to fix a decades-old flaw where almost every training plan, recovery schedule and injury-prevention rule was built around male bodies, not female ones. Research shows that between 2014 and 2020 only one-third of study participants in sports science were women, and fewer than 1 in 16 studies focused only on women. The result is like fitting a square peg in a round hole: warm-up routines that never change for menstrual cycles, nutrition advice that ignores iron needs after periods, and return-to-play timelines that don’t line up with pregnancy recovery. Small wonder injuries happen more often and top performances can slip through unseen gaps.

What makes this project stand out is it talks about the topics most coaches used to avoid. Sleep loss around periods? Check. Safe return after having a baby? Check. Eating enough protein during menopause? Check. Former US star Carli Lloyd, twice a World Cup winner, was one of the players who helped shape the lessons so they feel real, not like textbook theory. FIFA already tested this approach with ten national teams before the last World Cup. The feedback was clear: when doctors and coaches understood female physiology better, the players stayed healthier and played at a higher level. Now the same knowledge is available to every club from England to Ecuador through a simple online portal. With the next Women’s World Cup just over a year away in Brazil, the race is on to professionalise the women’s game. Having reliable female-specific data—and enough coaches brave enough to use it—could be the difference between watching a tournament where stars shine and one where too many leave injured or exhausted.

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