The speech that changed the course of women’s football

“I expressed my frustration and said we must take action.”

It was 1986 and the focus of Ellen Wille’s ire was football’s world governing body, Fifa. She was a member of the executive committee of the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) at the time, and she had just read a Fifa report that made no single mention of women’s football.

The Oslo-based science teacher would take matters into her own hands and deliver a speech that would compel those in charge of Fifa to take notice.

Women footballers were engaged in numerous battles for recognition and faced significant opposition from both inside and outside the game, as evidenced by the absence of support from the sport’s own international governing body.

At the start of the 1970s, the Football Association in England had ended a five-decade ban on women’s football.

More than 100, 000 spectators gathered for the first unofficial Women’s World Cup in 1970 in Italy, and a second unofficial global competition one year later in Mexico, both of whom received Fifa’s support.

Wille, who was an amateur footballer herself, was upset about the status quo after joining the NFF in 1976, the same year that it had approved of women’s football in the nation.

She remarked, “We must have a World Championship for women and we must compete in the Olympic Games.”

Her coworkers at the NFF recommended that she attend the Fifa congress in Mexico City, which was, incidentally, the city that hosted the unofficial 1971 global tournament, and give a speech about women’s football.

According to Wille, “they believed it would mean more if a woman did it rather than a man.” She did not hesitate.

But come the morning of the speech, the nerves had set in.

“When I came to the place where it would happen, there were only men, apart from female translators”, she said.

To make a speech, you had to raise a card and wait to be selected. There is no previous woman who has addressed a Fifa congress.

Wille, standing at 4ft 10in tall, was called to the stage, but it got off to an inauspicious start when she was too short to be able to reach the microphone.

Without a transcript or recording of the speech that is still available, Joao Havelange, the then-president of FIFA, and Sepp Blatter, the latter’s general secretary, were among those who saw it in person.

Fifa has minutes that confirm Wille had asked the general secretary to “draw more attention to women’s football, especially in terms of refereeing and the form of international tournaments,” despite the fact that it does not have a copy of the speech.

According to official Fifa reports from the congress of 1986, Havelange thanked her for directly thanking her and telling the group that Fifa was working on the opening world women’s tournament in 1988.

According to Wille, after he spoke all eyes turned to his right-hand man – Blatter, who would later succeed Havelange as president and hold the role from 1998 to 2015.

The way Blatter was perceived by the speech was perhaps the biggest indicator of how powerful it was. “I talked to him after]the speech] and I saw him years later”, said Wille.

When the World Cup was taking place in Germany, he had invited me there. He delivered a speech at dinner for me before I arrived there.

” He said I had frightened him. “

Per Ravn Omdal, a Norwegian who had spent more than ten years supporting the advancement of women’s football, was another.

The former footballer, who became president of the NFF in 1987, believes Wille’s speech – and Blatter’s response at the congress – was key to what happened next.

” They]Fifa] reacted extremely quickly and came back with a test World Cup in China]in 1988] which was very successful. I was there, “Omdal said.

” Then it started rolling until ‘ 91 and we had the first]official tournament]. “

The 1988 invitational tournament was a turning point for women’s football. After years of lobbying, Fifa was backing a World Cup. And it was thought that the congress of 1986 would bring about change.

The “First Fifa World Championship for Women’s Football for the M&amp, Ms Cup” was the lengthy title of the inaugural competition in 1991, but it later received a lengthy rename. It also involved matches that lasted only 80 minutes.

Some 36 years after Wille’s appearance, a Norwegian woman was once again making waves with a speech at a Fifa congress.

Lise Klaveness, the NFF’s first female president, and former Norway international, were present.

Klaveness addressed a nearly entirely male audience of football industry heavyweights for the 2022 congress in Doha in the weeks leading up to the Qatar World Cup, which had echoed 1986.

She told them they needed to do more, particularly around equality.

Some in the room didn’t like it much.

Speaking to the BBC’s World Service, Klaveness said:” We have come a long, long way since Ellen took the stage in 1986, but we also have to be very realistic that nothing has come by itself for women’s football.

“We’ve always been someone who has to fight for you,” he continued.

Most nations have no female presidents, most countries have few female board members, most countries struggle to get female coaches, and most nations struggle to get their top league athletes to have professional athletes so they can live off of it.

“We still need to create a professional environment that reflects the strength of women’s football,” said the statement.

But with the 2023 Women’s World Cup attracting nearly two million spectators, and millions more on television, it is hard not to look at the progress that has been made.

Wille minimizes the impact of her speech from a long time ago, blaming it as “just a small step along the way” in the direction of women’s football.

Klaveness views things differently.