The Football Association will provide better support to football clubs to get girls and women playing football. By 2028 at the latest, every football club in our country must have a women’s football coordinator. Clubs are encouraged to field both mixed and all-girls teams in competition.
Friday, March 29, 2024 at 10:14 AM
The measure is part of a master plan for women’s football that the Football Association presented on Friday together with the Pro League. Today, 53,000 women are members of the football association, accounting for 10 percent of the total. The football association wants to first bring that percentage to 15 percent, approximately the level in the Netherlands and Germany, and later to 20 percent, the level in the Nordic countries.
The intention is also to raise the level of top football. The Red Flames, the national women’s team, is today in eighteenth place in the FIFA rankings. The association wants to bring Belgium to the top 12 in the world and the top 8 in Europe.
Since this year, the Pro League has been managing the Super League, the women’s top competition, and is imposing stricter licensing conditions on clubs from the 2025-2026 season. Today, many players in the top flight are amateurs and are paid with expenses. From 2025-2026, every club must have at least eleven players under contract and train at least five times a week.
Sponsors are being sought to cover costs. The Pro League is setting up a “biz board” with women from the business community, such as Heidi De Pauw, the CEO of Child Focus, with the aim of attracting financiers to the women’s competition.
The Pro League also hopes to get more money from the TV market and will provide more and better coverage of the Super League in the new media contract. For the play-offs of the top competition, which started last weekend, the Pro League signed a deal with Sporza and the RTBf. Both public broadcasters bring highlights of the matches online.
