FIFA’s inaugural Women’s Club World Cup is set to significantly disrupt next season’s Women’s Super League, with two of Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City set to miss up to a month of domestic competition.
FIFA, the world governing body, approved the inaugural women’s tournament at its Congress last December, with the competition set for January 5-30, 2028 and involving 19. The dates fall in the middle of the 2027-28 WSL season.
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While qualification criteria is yet to be confirmed, Arsenal’s 2025 Champions League triumph likely means the north London club will be involved, while seven-time league champions Chelsea are the other potential contenders based on co-efficients. However, if last season’s WSL title winners Manchester City claim this season’s Champions League, they would likely take the spot of Chelsea.
The fixture schedule for the 2027-2028 season has yet to be finalised, but if the tournament were to be held this season, it would see those clubs involved miss at least four WSL matchdays, as well as the FA Cup fourth round fixtures.
Finding time to reschedule 10 fixtures, while also maintaining the competition’s sporting integrity given the impact on any title race or relegation battle, will prove extraordinarily difficult in an already congested schedule. There are also concerns over any knock-on effects to broadcast deals, given the WSL will be without two of its top teams for a month of the season.
The WSL schedule currently makes room for a winter break, which is scheduled for 21 December to 10 January this season. While there is the possibility of moving this break to accommodate Club World Cup matches, there is an understanding that doing so will only cause a lopsided calendar with backlogs on either side of the new year.
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The 16-team tournament was initially due to be introduced in 2026, but was later delayed to 2028, after stakeholders in the women’s game told FIFA that more time was needed to get it right.
The delay meant the first edition of the Women’s Club World Cup would be hosted in the same year as the Olympic Games, taking place in the United States between July 14-30, and six months after the Women’s World Cup in Brazil (June 24 to July 25, 2027).
WSL Football, the independent body which oversees the top two tiers of English women’s football, declined to comment.
However, in January, a spokesperson for WSL Football said the timing of FIFA’s new Women’s Club World Cup could be “catastrophic” for its competition. The spokesperson also claimed WSL Football was not consulted over the final dates by the world governing body.
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“The timing of that tournament causes us significant concern by multiple levels,” a WSL spokesperson said in a media briefing. “At best, it is inconvenient and is going to cause real headaches for us. At worst, it’s catastrophic for the game in this country, for our commercial programme, and more importantly for the welfare of our players.”
Speaking to The Athletic on Wednesday, NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman recognised the “fundamental challenge” that scheduling the Club World Cup poses. While the competition will fall directly in the middle of the WSL season, it is set to fall just before the NWSL season begins – meaning competing teams will have a shortened off-season following a World Cup summer.
“From our perspective the pro is that it doesn’t disrupt our season,” Berman said. “The con is that the teams that will be competing from our league, Gotham and others who will qualify in the coming months and years, will be in their off season. Those clubs are going to be coming off of a break, which inherently is an uneven playing field.
“Nikki [Doucet, WSL Football CEO] would tell you that having it in January means that their clubs will be in form. The con is that the teams that are going to be competing are going to have to take a break for a month when the rest of the league is playing.
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“What do you do in that conversation or in that context? There is no perfect answer. The perfect answer would be that we would all be on the same calendar, same start date, same finish date, and that we would work together with FIFA, CONCACAF, UEFA, U.S. Soccer, the FA, to actually look at the calendar starting from zero and build it in a way that maximises growth for everybody. That would be the ideal scenario, but that’s challenging.”
Additional reporting: Charlotte Harpur
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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