The impact of Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports will be felt by every sports governing organization, most forcefully by FIFA. Association football (soccer) is the most popular sport in the world, and it is run by arguably the most powerful regulatory apparatus in history.

Non-Americans may not know the meaning of an executive order: It is an official directive issued by the President to federal agencies and departments and has the force of law. The ban on transgender athletes is US policy, but its effects will be felt everywhere. A number of sports organizations, including those that govern swimming, golf and even chess, have already banned transgender women from competing in female events if they have passed through male puberty. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the US’s governing body for collegiate sports, reacted immediately, banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

Inclusivity and the World Cup

But FIFA is sure to challenge Trump’s ruling. The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) is the top-tier professional women’s soccer league in the US and operates under the jurisdiction of the United States Soccer Federation (USSF), which is a member of FIFA. As one of the world’s major sports governing bodies to have pledged themselves to inclusivity and against discrimination, FIFA will be deeply compromised by the transgender ban. The NWSL currently permits athletes to participate in accordance with their gender identity, provided their testosterone levels are within typical limits for female athletes. The guidelines will presumably be superseded by the new restrictive provisions.

That’s only one of FIFA’s difficulties: equally as vexing is its commitment to holding its quadrennial World Cup competition in the USA, Canada and Mexico. FIFA faced criticism for granting hosting rights to the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia, where homosexual relations are outlawed and punishable by law. The criticism will seem mild compared to the condemnation that will surely follow if FIFA remains silent on Trump’s prohibition, which seems to undermine every feature of FIFA’s credo. Some will argue it is hypocritical to stage an event that symbolizes inclusivity in a territory where inclusivity is now sneered at.

Trump’s common sense

Since becoming president, Trump has ordered an end to federal government diversity efforts, including some dating back to Lyndon Johnson, and may expel transgender people from the US military. Trump blamed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies for the collision of a commercial jet and military helicopter that killed 67 people just outside Washington in January. It was his “common sense” assessment rather than an evidence-based evaluation. The same common sense informs much of Trump’s early initiatives. On his first day in office, he signed an order calling for the federal government to define sex as “only male or female” based on reproductive cells. This should be reflected on all official documents, such as passports.

Even the title of the transgender order echoes Trump’s version of good sense and sound judgment: “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” Anything other than Trump’s understanding is dismissed as dogma or fanaticism: an earlier Trump order has the insistent title, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” and prescriptively instructs the federal government to remove “all radical gender ideology guidance, communication, policies, and forms.”

All this jars with global trends that have affected many parts of the world since the rise of the #MeToo movement. Common sense, at least as Trump defines it, is a kind of knowledge that seemed perfectly serviceable 40 or 50 years ago.

Women’s football — an LGBTQ+ platform

Over recent years, FIFA has positioned itself as a champion of inclusivity, drawing short of activism but relaxing its strictures of mixing the association football it governs with social, cultural and political affairs. For example, following the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and the ensuing protest, FIFA sanctioned football players to take a knee in shows of support for Black Lives Matter before games. Its effective elevation of the women’s game to the most popular female sport in the world has drawn admiration.

Women’s football is arguably the most effective crusader for LGBTQ+ rights in the world, perhaps eclipsing Stonewall, ILGA World and Outright International (remind yourself what the T in LGBTQ+ stands for). FIFA has symbolized its commitment by endorsing players and sometimes whole teams who wish to display their loyalties by wearing rainbow colors. Both female and male teams have worn rainbow armbands and shoe laces to exhibit their moral positions. Football as a sport stands squarely on the right side of history. It is barely imaginable that FIFA will stray to the other side.

What will FIFA do next?

World sport has no uniform policy on transgender athletes. The eligibility rules are different for different sports and in different countries. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has a laissez-faire framework that allows for sports-specific eligibility criteria. It, too, will be challenged to respond to Trump’s initiative, but not nearly as much as FIFA. Association football has managed to steer clear of major controversies. The organization’s existing gender verification regulations, established in 2011, state simply that only men are eligible to play in men’s competitions, and the same applies to women. In 2022, following policy changes in other sports, FIFA announced it was reviewing its gender eligibility regulations in consultation with expert stakeholders. No updated policy has yet been published. In the absence of explicit guidance from FIFA, some leagues developed their own policies. Spain, for example, has a team comprising only transgender players.  

Now, FIFA must confront Trump’s ban and decide whether or not to oppose it. It’s conceivable that American teams could face exclusion from international tournaments if US sports organizations are unable to field teams that comply with more inclusive international rules. But this is massively complicated by the fact that games at the 2026 FIFA World Cup are scheduled to take place in the USA, as well as Canada and Mexico. A robust response would be to threaten to rearrange games scheduled for New York, Dallas, Atlanta and elsewhere in the USA. But it would be a logistical nightmare and, in any case, media groups would protest. Ridiculous as it seems, FIFA could disqualify the US team from the competition. Trump himself would probably intervene and threaten FIFA.

FIFA can hardly avoid becoming involved in the furor. It will express misgivings about the ban and emphasize the organization’s continuing commitment to inclusivity. It may allow individual players or entire national teams to stage protests or articulate their disagreement with the order. It could even endorse some sort of protest at the World Cup, though this is unlikely. In 2022, England team captain Harry Kane was prevented from wearing a rainbow armband, presumably to avoid embarrassing Qatar, where the World Cup tournament was being held. FIFA clearly did not wish to upset the tournament hosts.

Monstrous dilemma

Yet, if FIFA needed to bare its teeth, now is the time: Transgenderism is likely to be the single most intensely debated issue in sports over the next decade or so. The arguments on both sides are persuasive: Women complain the hard-earned advances they have made in sports since the 1990s are under threat because athletes assigned male at birth are allowed to compete against natal females. Athletes who have experienced gender dysphoria and transitioned in a way they feel reflects them intellectually and emotionally complain they are excluded from competition or forced to compete in a hybrid class. For example, The New York City Marathon has a non-binary division for runners who do not identify as either men or women. There are other variations in other sports.

FIFA faces a monstrous dilemma. It would probably love to reassert its position as sport’s most enlightened, progressive and reformist governor. But the first of 104 games that will comprise the next World Cup will take place on June 11, 2026, so any threats are bound to appear empty.

The next women’s World Cup is not until 2027. There is likely to be change between now and then, but if there isn’t and the ban remains in place, the USA will not have a team in Brazil: It will either withdraw voluntarily or be disqualified. Women’s football is more activist and a lot less conciliatory than its male counterpart and will use Trump’s ban to dramatize the transphobia it opposes, along with any other form of bigotry.

[Ellis Cashmore’s new book Sport and Crime (with Kevin Dixon and Jamie Cleland) will be published in March.]

[Will Sherriff edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.