The drama began when Gotham FC’s McCall Zerboni found the ball at the top of the box and calmly placed it past Tigres’ goalkeeper to the delight of the small crowd inside a cold Red Bull Arena. Opposing fans quickly responded in song, cheering their Mexican side on as they trailed 1-0 just four minutes into this game.
No one expected what followed: a constant back-and-forth, with eight goals scored in 71 minutes and the night ending in a dramatic 4-4 draw.
Wednesday night’s match concluded the first group stage of the CONCACAF W Champions Cup, the confederation’s first continental women’s club championship. It was a chaotic night that unraveled under a harvest moon in New Jersey, with both teams advancing to the competition’s semifinal round to be played sometime in May.
This is, as Gotham’s head coach Juan Carlos Amoros said after the match, a “very, very important competition”. His team’s second-place group finish means Gotham is now one step closer to clinching a spot in the upcoming women’s Club World Cup in 2026, a new tournament that remains very much in its infancy despite being just 15 months away.
The tournament’s creation comes at a time when women’s football is bursting at the seams. Club teams are travelling more than ever for international fixtures as the borders between leagues slowly shrink. While the sport’s growth is welcome, those in the game are cautioning that this should happen responsibly, with player welfare top of mind.
The Club World Cup is expected to be played in January and February of 2026, according to FIFA’s most recent public remarks about the competition. That was in mid-May, when the FIFA Council approved the women’s International Match Calendar from 2026 to 2029. The tournament, FIFA has said, will feature 16 teams, though conversations around those specifics, like how many clubs each confederation will be allocated, remain ongoing.
Not much else has been shared publicly in the five months since, with details like sponsorships, the competition structure, qualification pathways and, most importantly, a host nation still pending.
FIFA has also been slow in sharing details of the men’s edition of that same tournament, slated to take place in the U.S. in just eight months. FIFA president Gianni Infantino last month announced the 12 venues that would host matches for the 32-team tournament, even as pressure mounts to cancel the controversial event outright. The most prominent pushback came this week, with La Liga president Javier Tebas saying he told Infantino to “scrap” the tournament altogether, largely over concerns about a congested calendar and a lack of interest by stakeholders in the men’s game.
Some of that tension revolves around domestic leagues having little say over the decisions FIFA makes and similar concerns exist in the women’s game. In March, NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman told The Athletic that “the women’s international match calendar has no opportunity for the professional sports leagues to have any input, and we are the most important stakeholder to grow the game.” That’s partly why the Women’s Leagues Forum, a collection of 16 women’s leagues and organizations, co-chaired by Berman, formed: to advocate for more input in these decisions.
Though a Club World Cup isn’t expected until 2026, its impact can already be felt. The in-season W Champions Cup is considered the sole pathway for clubs in the CONCACAF region to qualify for the Club World Cup. Its creation added more games to an already congested NWSL calendar, with teams from the U.S. having to play midweek Champions Cup matches in between regular-season games.
“I think the problem that happened on this specific year, there was no coordination between everyone,” Amoros said, following their goalless Champions Cup draw with CF Monterrey Femenil in September.
“The league released the dates and we had to start the schedule and suddenly we tried to add in another competition in midweek. I think it should have been unified, taking into consideration all the competitions that these players are playing. We can’t forget, either, that we’ve got a lot of international players.”
Many of those international players at Gotham began their NWSL season by skipping preseason, heading straight into competing in the inaugural CONCACAF W Gold Cup, which was eventually won by the U.S. Later, about halfway through the season, most of those same players traveled to Paris to compete in the Paris Olympic games.
“What we are asking from these players is too much,” Amoros said. “It’s putting at risk their health and I think it’s everyone’s responsibility — the governing bodies — to look after us, but especially after them, and making sure that the competition is as fair as possible.”
This upcoming international window, decided by FIFA, also poses complications for Gotham, which has five players called up to the U.S. national team for three friendly competitions in the coming weeks, with two players also competing with England and Germany. The third U.S. match in that window will be against Argentina on a Wednesday night in Louisville. Two days later, Gotham has its final regular-season match against the Utah Royals: a fixture that could determine standings heading into playoffs. “That’s just not possible,” Amoros said.
“It is something that they really need to look at because of the health and safety of the players and the integrity of the competition,” he continued. “There are little things there to improve but I think everyone is trying. It’s very good, these competitions — it’s just a question of unifying) the calendar and getting everyone’s opinions: coaches, players, clubs and FAs, organizations, national team, and, also, bigger organizations, like CONCACAF in this case.”
There’s no denying the value of a competition like a Club World Cup in women’s soccer, which currently has no official competitions like it at club level. When FIFA announced initial details of the Women’s Club World Cup in May, they also said an additional women’s club competition would be organized in non-Club World Cup years, beginning in 2027. This will be done, as FIFA said, with the hopes of continuing the global development of women’s clubs and also per confederations’ requests.
Gotham and U.S. national team forward Lynn Williams said on Wednesday that a Club World Cup “is a very exciting thing for global soccer” because of the ability “to be able to compete against not just your league, but other leagues around the world”. But this growth needs to be sustained with appropriate infrastructure, she said.
“I think that sometimes in the world of soccer, especially women’s soccer, we are so excited to see the boom, but I would say we need to have an infrastructure as well underneath, so we can support us in our travel, in our being able to play,” Williams said, following Gotham’s draw with Tigres. “Do we have enough masseuses? Do we have enough trainers? We have all of those things, especially in our league, where we are on a different schedule than all the other leagues.
“In this tournament, right now, we are playing three games a week for a lot of weeks,” she continued. “So it is very exciting for global soccer. It is moving in the right direction, but my hope is that we also push the infrastructure as well.”
A successful Club World Cup could propel the women’s game forward. The growing international club ecosystem has already paved the way for the W Champions Cup, a first in the region mirroring other Champions Leagues that are sprouting up around the world. Some, like the Copa Libertadores Femenina, have been around much longer.
“I think that is very important, that there is that competition,” Amoros said of a Club World Cup. “I would say, on the women’s side, it’s even maybe more attractive or important than the men’s side at this point because there are a lot less international competitions at the club level (in women’s football) and I think we are excited for it.”
It’s the “only way”, he stressed, that American teams and European teams, for example, could compete against one another in an official capacity. That could lead to tense matchups, like the battle between Gotham and Tigres on Wednesday, and potentially epic showdowns in the next round of the competition.
“We want to be part of it,” Amoros said. “That’s why we have taken this competition very seriously.”
(Top photo: Ira L. Black – Corbis/Getty Images)
