This video submission includes quotes from FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Head of Women’s Football Kari Seitz, FIFA Legend and RB Leipzig player/coach Anja Mitta speaking at the World Trade Organisation on Monday.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino:

“I mean, as Dr Ngozi [Okonjo-Iweala] said, we have started this collaboration and this partnership with the WTO because sport, and football in particular, is also linked to trade. It has a real economic impact – well over [USD] 200 billion all over the world. Actually, at least 70% of this, actually almost [USD] 270 billion now, is generated in Europe. So, imagine the potential that there is still outside of Europe, and the Cotton Four initiative is part of unleashing that potential.

So, when I joined FIFA, when I was elected FIFA President for the first time, immediately wanted to set some clear steps for the development of women’s football–50% of the population. But I would say in addition to that, I have to declare here a conflict of interest. As a father of four daughters, I am obliged, of course, because I have a lot of pressure at home to do something for women generally, for women in football, for women in trade, for women empowerment and it is a great pleasure to do so.

We set some ambitious targets and, I think, we put some signals as one of the first tasks, one of the first things that we did, was to create in FIFA – it did not exist [previously] – a women’s football division. It did not exist [previously]; it took us over 100 years to do it, but we did it in the first few months after my election. And, actually, a nice lady from Down Under – from New Zealand – is chairing, or is heading up this division, Sarai [Bareman]. She has been director of that division [for] seven years now.

We also appointed, for the first time – on my proposal – in the history of FIFA over 112 years, the first woman as General Secretary–or Secretary General–of FIFA, which is the top position in the administration of FIFA. So, these are signals. We elaborated a women’s football strategy that we put in place in 2018.

Then, of course Covid-19 came, which gave us all, all over the world, a bit of a halt in what we were doing, but we continued to develop it. We created a COVID-19 Relief Plan worth USD1.5billion, a big part of which went into all our 211 countries which are members of FIFA, specifically targeted to keeping women’s football alive.”

“Now, we had – to come back to what we [have done] for women’s football – a very successful Women’s World Cup in France in 2019, with 1.2 billion viewers all over the world, more than one million in the stadiums; this shows the magnitude of this event.

The next World Cup in Australia and New Zealand will be even bigger than that, with two billion viewers. We had 172 countries participating in the qualifiers for this World Cup in Australia and New Zealand and the last World Cup in France only had 143 countries.