A Gay Woman With Principles? Uefa And The Soccer Family Say No.

“Why is it such a big deal?” asked Lise Klaveness of the difficulty for women to get elected for an executive role in European soccer. The Norwegian FA president had chatted to fellow executives, campaigned, and spoken up, but in the tight-knit world of soccer, that was not enough. With 18 votes, including the backing of England and Germany, she came second last in the elections for the Uefa executive committee, defeated by, among others, the reticent and invisible Jesper Moller of Denmark, the Albanian poultry magnate Armand Duka, Ukraine’s Andriy Pavelko, who got arrested at the end of 2022, and Philippe Diallo, a new official from France.

Soccer has long had a problem with female executives. Klaveness is one of nine female FA presidents in the world, including two heads of normalization committees in Chad and Guinea. At the world federation, Fatma Samoura of Senegal holds the position of secretary general, but, traveling around the world tweeting about minor soccer matches and on a gross salary of 1.3 million euros, Samoura’s contributions to the sport are very limited. At the 2019 Fifa Congress, soccer supremo Gianni Infantino pointed out, to his own delight, that she was ‘black’ and ‘a woman’.

It has not prevented the world’s most popular sport from painting an image of gender equality and empowerment, but, on Wednesday, at the Uefa Congress, those pretensions were shattered when Klaveness bidding to become the first woman to get elected in a direct vote against male candidates fell short.

“It ended where I all the way thought it would end,” Klaveness told me. “Eighteen countries voted for the first female president in history and I’ve had all these conversations, so this is just the end of the beginning, you know, now we have just started…”

A former national team player, a lawyer, and a skilled soccer administrator at home in Norway, Klaveness did not want to stand for the seat reserved for women, which Laura McAllister of Wales won. It was a deliberate choice, but one that was always going to complicate her campaign in which she carried the baton for those who want change in soccer governance. “We supported her, but perhaps it is better for those who didn’t to explain why,” said Swedish FA president Fredrik Reinfeldt. “It was a tough election.”

“I think she’s a very brave woman,” said English FA president Hewitt, who became the first female vice president in FIFA history. “I think she’s a very smart woman. And I think that she has the ability to listen to learn to influence. She’s a professional footballer, she’s a lawyer, what’s not to like?”

Asked why it is so difficult for women to get executive roles in soccer, Hewitt said: “I’ve never come at it from (the position of) ‘I’m a woman in a man’s world’. I come at it from the fact that I’m a business person. I understand business and the way that business works, and a certain amount of football is about similar sorts of things as you face in business.”

But those remarks are perhaps easier to make for those who belong to the establishment. Described as the Swedish ‘David Cameron’, Reinfeldt is a former prime minister of Sweden. Hewitt holds major non-executive roles at both BGL Group and Visa. Her new role comes with a generous $300,000 salary and other FIFA perks. Having ignored the media for the better part of 18 months, Hewitt said: “My predecessors have all taken the salary. It’s a big job. You can bet that I will give it my heart and my soul and whatever the compensation and remuneration is, I will talk to Fifa when I understand what that is and what the whole package is.”

Klaveness, however, is an outlier in soccer. Gay, she delivered a thunderous and memorable speech at last year’s FIFA Congress in Doha, highlighting both the plight of migrant workers and discrimination against the LGBT community in Qatar. However, the soccer establishment retorted immediately. A senior Qatari soccer administrator, Hassan Al Tawadi accused Klaveness and other critics of being badly informed and Honduran FA president Jorge Salomon said it was not the ‘right time” for a profound debate. The soccer industry was closing ranks.

The industry does not tolerate criticism. FIFA president Gianni Infantino delivered a rambling and ranting attack on the media at the world federation’s recent congress in Kigali. Not even simple questions are appreciated. Aleksander Ceferin’s news conference in the Portuguese capital was very brief. Transparency is in short supply.

And then there are those who applaud this from the floor – Moller, who consolidated his own position but failed to bring the Women’s Euro 2025 to the Nordic countries, and others who tow the party line and enjoy the five-star luxury life that comes with soccer officialdom. The silence over substantial matters is striking. In 2020, Switzerland’s FA president Dominique Blanc was the last official at a Uefa Congress to pose a question from the floor, expressing concern over Covid-19. At FIFA Congress, Palestine’s soccer boss Jibril Rajoub, at times, stands up, but his interventions are quickly suppressed. It reminds the avid reader of the book ‘Omerta’ by the late, legendary British journalist Andrew Jennings.

But even Uefa seemed somewhat embarrassed by Klaveness’s defeat. At his news conference, Ceferin suggested that Uefa might consider a second quota seat for women. In Klaveness’s view however women’s soccer should not be used as a political tool – it detracts from addressing what really matters, the actual game. In the corridors of power, that consideration is often irrelevant. Characteristically, Klaveness insisted on congratulating her rivals who won seats, but on the eve of Uefa’s 70th birthday men still have a stranglehold on the game.