The 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup in Qatar has featured 26-player rosters for all 32 participating nations, but that reportedly won’t be the case for next year’s Women’s World Cup.
FIFA has rejected a proposal to expand the Women’s World Cup rosters to 26 players, Sky Sports reported Wednesday. England women’s national team manager Sarina Wiegman and German women’s national team manager Marina Voss-Tecklenburg previously discussed the proposal with other international coaches at the Women’s World Cup finals draw in October, according to the report.
Enlarged rosters of 26 players have been used at not only the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, but also the 2020 and 2021 editions of the Men’s and Women’s European Championships.
Australia and New Zealand will joint-host the Women’s World Cup over a 31-day period, with the opening match slated for July 20. A total of nine cities will host matches during the tournament.
The U.S. women’s national team has mainly used a 23-player roster for its competitive schedule over the past year. Vlatko Andonovski’s squad featured 23 players during the Concacaf W Championship, which the Americans won after defeating Canada 1-0 in the tournament final.
The USWNT returns to action in January with two road friendlies against New Zealand.
This makes complete and total sense. The expanded rosters were first a COVID work-around and then a work around for the compressed schedule that was necessary to accommodate the ludicrous decision to hold the Men’s World Cup in the middle of club season. It is time go get back to a 23 player roster and 3 subs because the WWC will (hopefully) be played during normal times
There are no more normal times, Covid will be around for the foreseeable future, ths FIFA needs to continue to treat it as such. These decisions are why there is the stigma that Fifa doesn’t respect the women’s game as much as the men’s, actually we know that to be the case, and this declining of the proposal on the women’s side proves that to me. If you do it for the men in the 2022 WC, do it for the women in the 2023 WC, so you at least look like you have a modicum anti-bias….geezus
I disagree that there are no more normal times. If that were the case then FIFA could have made the changes permanent. They did not. It is only bias if they keep the same expanded roster for the men after they returned to normalcy for the women. As for the stigma and the optics, people will get offended over anything nowadays so why bother trying to appease the complainers.
How in the world did FIFA justify that? Seems to me it’s a massive double standard.
FIFA said the changes were made “given the need to retain additional flexibility due to the unique timing of the FIFA World Cup 2022 in the global calendar, as well as the broader context of the disruptive effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on squads before and during tournaments.”
That’s why. Everyone just loves to complain and not research the reason.