Football Coaches Australia and Global Institute of Sport to host Women’s Football Summit

Staff Writer
FCA Women's Summit

Football Coaches Australia is passionate about improving high performance environments for women football coaches in Australia.

In a collaboration between Football Coaches Australia (FCA), Global Institute of Sport (GIS) and XVenture, FCA will host a Women’s Football Summit at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Tuesday July 25, 2023. The Summit is being held exclusively during the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023, which begins on July 20.

Hosted by BBC Sport Presenter Mark Clemmit, the Summit will focus on the Australian women’s coaching landscape, discussing the evolution of coaches and the cultural changes required for the women’s game, based on past and current experiences.

Accredited coaches who attend the Summit will receive 30 CPD Points as determined by Football Australia Coach Education

For full details and to register for the event, please visit the following link: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/global-institute-of-sport-football-coaches-aus-womens-football-summit-2023-tickets-618400250797

The Summit will feature presenters who are  leading women’s football coaches and/or experts in their areas of coach and player professional development, wellbeing, advocacy and equity.

Belinda Wilson:

Belinda is the Senior Technical Development Manager at FIFA working with the Women’s Football Division based in Zurich She is responsible for developing and executing football development programs linked to the objectives of the FIFA Women’s Football Strategy.

Michelle De Highden:

Michelle is a member of the AIS High Performance Coach Development Team and is leading a national project to shift the dial on the underrepresentation and experiences of women in high performance coaching. Michelle is an experienced high-performance coach and coach developer, passionate about facilitating coach development at the high-performance level.

Aish Ravi:

Aish is a FCA Executive Committee member the Women’s Coaching Association Co-Founder/ Director , a Football Australia Women’s Council member; Secondary School and Tertiary Educator, Head Coach of Cobras FC. Aish has recently completed her PhD paper ‘Exploring the lived experience of women coaches in Australia’, which is the topic she will present at the Summit

Dr Deidre Anderson:

Dr Deidre Anderson AM is an outstanding social scientist and leader, who has worked with a variety of organisations and elite international athletes. She has held executive positions both at international and national level within elite sport and the private sector.

Mike Conway:

Mike is the founder/ CEO of  XVenture and was the Emotional Agility and Mental Coach, for the Socceroos at the FIFA  World Cup in Qatar having previously worked with Socceroos coach Graham Arnold as part of the team behind Sydney FC’s historic A-League Men’s success, He is a TV Director, writer, business leader, clinician and mental coach for organisations, teams and elite sports stars, senior executives and entertainers.

Glenn Warry:

Glenn is the CEO of Football Coaches Australia and has worked in professional sport since 1983 in all football codes in Club management and national player/coach professional development roles. FCA’s key pillars are advocacy, professional development, wellbeing and equity. Glenn is leading discussions with Football Australia and Australian Professional Leagues regarding benchmark employment conditions for coaches.

Mark Torcasio and Helen Winterburn – Western United Football Club Coaches

A-League Women’s Coach of the Year in Season 2022-23, Mark has been passionate about women’s football for many years and has only ever worked in the women’s game. He led Western United FC to the A-League Women’s Grand Final in their inaugural 2023/24 season. Western United welcomed Helen to the Club as the inaugural Liberty A-League Women Assistant Coach. After beginning coaching in the United Kingdom at the age of 16, Helen went on to earn UEFA B Licence and take on a four-year scholarship at Limestone University in South Carolina, United States.

The FCA/GIS expert football panel: Let’s Talk Football – FIFA Women’s World Cup

The expert football panel will discuss all the talking points of the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Members of the panel are:

  • Gary Cole (facilitator): Host of “The Football Coaching Life” podcast and former Socceroo.
  • Heather Garriock: Optus Sport Football Expert & 130-capped Matilda Midfielder; FA Board member; former A-Leagues coach – Canberra United FC; CEO Taekwondo Australia.
  • Catherine Cannuli: Optus Sport; former Matilda; Technical Director Southern Districts Soccer Football Association; former Western Sydney Wanderers FC A-League Women’s Head coach.
  • Sarah West: FCA Vice President; former Canberra United FC A-League Assistant Coach.
  • Tom Sermanni: FCA Ambassador; Canadian National Team Assistant Coach; former Matildas, USA and New Zealand Head Coach.

Glenn Warry, Football Coaches Australia CEO:

“Football Coaches Australia seeks governance, professional standards, policies, regulations and professional development to appropriately support coaches within the women’s football coaching pathway and full time sustainable coaching roles at the professional level.

The A-League Women’s 2023-24 season will be a 20-round season extending to the full, 22 rounds (132 total matches) in 2024-25, bringing the league into line with global benchmarks. Whilst the structure was approved by the players through the Professional Footballers Australia, it is important that FIFA rules and regulation benchmarks, regarding the employment of coaches, are also adopted.

From an equity point of view, as we are about to kick off the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia, we only have two female head coaches appointed for the  A-League Women’s 2023-24 and only three women who hold a full time professional coaching role in the country.

We welcome coaches and leaders to join our outstanding speakers who will share their insights and drive interactive discussion in their areas of expertise, during the full-day professional development and networking event at the greatest sporting stadium in the world.”

Sharona Friedman, Global Institute of Sport President:

“We’re delighted to be able to host the Women’s Coaching Summit alongside our partners Football Coaches Australia during our annual student conference at the MCG.

This Summit is exactly what we aim to do at Global Institute of Sport to ensure our students have opportunities to learn from and network with the best in the game. It promises to be a fantastic opportunity not only for our sports degree students from across the globe but also for the Australian football industry to learn from those at the forefront of the drive for gender equity.

It is imperative that we work together as an industry and leverage the once in a lifetime opportunity of hosting the FIFA Women’s World Cup to create an environment that helps to provide better and increased opportunities for female football coaches.”

Previous ArticleNext Article

Off the Pitch Podcast: Cavallucci On the Importance of FQ’s Future Club+ Initiative for Local Clubs

Avatar
Image Credit: Football Queensland

On Episode 16 of Soccerscene’s Off the Pitch Podcast, it was a special episode with FQ CEO Rob Cavallucci ahead of the all-important 2025 Queensland Football Convention.

Many topics around the issues in Queensland football were discussed including Futsal’s incredible growth, update on Perry Park’s upgrade plan and driving player retention in certain youth age groups.

On the topic of administration, FQ’s new Future Club+ is a ground-breaking initiative designed to strengthen the foundations of football clubs across the state.

The concept of this began after last year’s convention and through interactive club lab sessions and ongoing consultation, FQ are continuing those discussions and driving practical change.

Cavallucci discussed the current volunteering and administration issues that are plaguing local football clubs.

“Future Club+ is in line with what I talked about earlier in regard to what we need to do to best position this sport for the next 20 years,” he said.

“Clubs are run by volunteers and volunteerism is waning. A lot of clubs can’t get the administration right because they also can’t get the governance right.

“The sport is run by volunteers and when you look at the fact that volunteerism is declining in Australia across every sport, you know it’s a problem we have to solve right now.

“From a governing body point of view, when you look at that, that’s actually a limiting factor on the success of our sport.”

He also gave a solution on how FQ are going to tackle this in the future, specifically in regards to what  Future Club+ will offer in the 2025 Queensland Football Convention and beyond.

“We need to start to work with clubs to transform how they manage themselves and that means a whole series of things. Hence the Future Club+ concept is looking at that and rethinking about best practice of how a club should operate,” he said.

“What we’ve been doing over the last 18 months through a series of webinars and in the last convention, and even in this upcoming one, there’s three Future Club+ sessions and it’s all about best practice at a club.”

In this convention, the three Future Club+ sessions are:

#1 What data reveals about your club future

#2 The amalgamation playbook: Real stories from the clubs forging the future

#3 The growth engine: your tool kit to fund staff and empower volunteers.

“Those three subjects should be very appealing to any club.”

Click hear the full interview with Rob Cavallucci, on Episode 16 of Soccerscene’s Off the Pitch Podcast – available on all major podcasting platforms.

Why La Liga and Serie A’s Overseas Ambitions Miss the Mark

Avatar
Image credit: Christian Bertrand / Shutterstock.com

There’s something special about a home game. The walk to the ground, the echo of chants through narrow streets, and the sight of familiar faces in the stands all weave together to form football’s cultural heartbeat. It’s the essence of what makes the sport local, communal, and deeply personal.

So when a domestic league decides to move one of its regular-season fixtures to another country, it feels like a breach of that bond. La Liga’s recently cancelled plan to stage a match in Miami is a case in point, a move that was ambitious in its intent but misguided in its execution.

The proposal, initially set to feature Barcelona and Villarreal in Miami this December, was meant to mark the first time a Spanish league match would be played outside of Spain. It was to be a significant moment in La Liga’s international expansion, yet, this week, La Liga confirmed the game would no longer go ahead. 

La Liga announced the cancellation in a statement on October 22nd, stating, “the decision has been made to cancel the organisation of the event due to the uncertainty that has arisen in Spain over the past few weeks.”

The explanation might sound clear and logical, but the underlying tone was clear: resistance from players, clubs, and supporters had proven too strong for the league to ignore.

Football’s global reach has never been greater, and the appetite for elite European football across North America and Asia is undeniable. But not everything that makes sense commercially aligns with what makes football special.

A home fixture isn’t just a logistical concept; it’s a symbol of identity. It represents the connection between a club and its community, between the stands and the city they inhabit. When that connection is uprooted for the sake of marketing, the league risks diminishing the very qualities that make it engaging in the first place.

It received extreme backlash…

The backlash from both fans and players was immediate and significant. Across Spain, supporters’ groups voiced anger that such a fundamental change to the league was being discussed without meaningful consultation. Many saw it as a betrayal of local supporters who invest time, money, and passion into following their clubs week after week.

Players, too, made their objections clear. Earlier this season, La Liga footballers staged coordinated on-pitch protests, pausing for 15 seconds at kick-off to highlight their frustration over the lack of dialogue and respect shown by league officials.

The Spanish players’ union publicly condemned the proposal, warning that taking competitive fixtures abroad undermines not only the integrity of the league but also the players’ physical welfare due to travel demands and congested scheduling. Together, fans and players presented a united front, a strong display of solidarity that ultimately helped force La Liga to reconsider its plans.

These objections were more than emotional reactions, they were grounded in the structural logic of sport. The home-and-away format exists to ensure fairness, balance, and authenticity. A club’s “home advantage” is not merely a cliche or superstition; it’s a reflection of support and identity. 

La Liga still chasing the Premier League’s revenue records

However, it’s easy to see why the idea was tempting. La Liga faces an uphill battle to keep up with the Premier League’s global dominance.

Broadcasting revenue gaps continue to widen, and both La Liga and Serie A are seeking creative ways to reach new audiences. The Miami match would have been a global showcase, a polished event designed to generate headlines, sponsorships, and international attention.

But if the aim is to build sustainable global engagement, staging a regular-season game overseas is the wrong mechanism. Fans abroad are not asking for borrowed fixtures; they’re asking for connection.

They want access to content, insight, and a sense of belonging, all of which can be achieved through digital outreach or pre-season tours, both of which can be done  without disrupting the league calendar.

Serie A should definitely take note. The league is awaiting conformation from FIFA for a proposed competitive league match abroad, with Italian giants AC Milan set to take on Como FC at Optus Stadium on the 8th of February, 2026.

Como FC, in a club statement released for its members, have said that the international fixture and the revenue generated from it will “help ensure survival” for the club and mentioned the enormous financial advantage in English football.  

The ambition mirrors La Liga’s idea to expand the league’s global footprint and revitalise revenue streams. Yet, the lessons from Spain are plain to see. If the goal is to grow, do so without compromising the supporters who form the league’s foundation.

Conclusion

Domestic football thrives on the local community, the ritual of weekend fixtures, the generational ties that bind fans to their clubs. When that structure is interrupted for the sake of revenue or global recognition, the game begins to lose its grounding.

That’s why the cancellation of La Liga’s Miami game should be welcomed as more than a logistical decision; it’s an important reminder that football’s heart still beats at home. It suggests that, even amid the relentless pursuit of global growth, there remains an understanding that tradition and community still matter.

Perhaps the idea of regular-season games abroad will resurface in the future, the commercial pressures will certainly persist. But when that conversation returns, it should begin with the fans, and players, not the investors. 

La Liga’s decision may have disappointed some executives and sponsors, but it has restored a small measure of balance to the sport’s ongoing tension between profit and culture

Most Popular Topics

Editor Picks

Send this to a friend