Suzanne Bakker coaches Milan. She is Dutch, forty-two years old and, in this year’s Italian women’s Serie A, she is the only woman to sit on the bench as a head coach. One in twelve teams. A fact that, if you didn’t know that we were talking about the women’s championship, would seem almost impossible to explain. Instead, this is exactly what happens, in Italy and beyond. Since professionalism, real contracts, investments, the coaches have almost disappeared, replaced by male colleagues. As if growth in terms of salaries and prestige tended to attract more men into leadership positions.
Women’s football, but the coach is almost always male
The lack of equality in football, in general, but in women’s football in particular, is not just an Italian problem, even if in our country the paradox is seen with particular clarity. In the Champions Leaguethe most important European tournament for women’s clubs, out of eighteen participating teams only four have a coach. In Germany three out of sixteen, in England four, in France and Spain two. At the 2023 World Cup, played in Australia and New Zealand, out of thirty-two national teams present, less than half, around twelve, were led by a woman.
A women’s sport led by men
An absence that says a lot about how difficult certain stereotypes are still to eradicate: a sport practiced by women, organized around women, which bears the name of women and, however, when it comes to decide, to command, to guide, here the female presence becomes thinner until it almost disappears. It is clear that this cannot be a coincidence or a question of competence. Looking at it, it seems more the result of a system than decades he considered certain rolesthose of authority, of technical command, as naturally masculine.
Women’s football is growing, making noise, filling stadiums. But who decides. (Getty Images)
The price of invisibility
The numbers describing this situation come from Sport Research and Gender Equality report published in 2025and they are clear enough to remove any doubt. In Italy, among the coaches of the most important sports clubs, football, volleyball, basketball, rugby, water polo, women represent 3.1% of coaches. Eleven people out of 357 and all eleven work with women’s teams. In the national teams it goes slightly better, but only slightly: female coaches reach 7%, but we are still talking about nine women out of 117 total coaches.
A woman on the bench, credibility is not free
Becoming a coach is difficult even before you even enter the field. Not only for qualifying courses which have access criteria that have historically favored men. But there is also something even more subtle and more difficult to earn: credibility. A woman who shows up on the bench wearing a tracksuit and a whistle often still has to earn something that a male colleague gets almost automatically. It must convince players, managers, fans, journalists that they can fit in that place. It’s not a sensation: it’s a documented dynamic, told by those who have followed that path.
On women’s football, FIFA forces its hand: the new norm
It is in this context that FIFAthe Fédération Internationale de Football Association, the body that governs world football, announced a new rule. From now on, in all the competitions it organizes directly, each team must have at least two women on the technical staffone of which has the role of main coach or assistant coach. The rule applies to national teams and clubs, to the youth and professional sectors.
The first test will be the Under 20 Women’s World Cupreserved for players under 20, scheduled for September in Poland. Jill Ellis, the technical manager of world football for FIFA, explained the logic of this choice: there are not enough women in football and waiting for the situation to change on its own didn’t work. For this reason, it is necessary to impose a presence so that that presence can then become normal.
The problem behind the problem
There is a bigger question, however, which FIFA’s rule does not resolve but helps to bring into focus. Why, as a women’s sport becomes richer and more visible, does it tend to attract more men into positions of power?
It happens in football, but not only. It happens in many areas: when a sector grows and becomes more prestigious, the selection mechanisms tend to favor those who already occupy similar positions in similar contexts. And those contexts, historically, have been dominated by men. These are not accusations or trials of intentions. It’s about recognizing that certain dynamics exist, that they produce concrete effects, and that to change them it’s not enough to wait.
