The 74th FIFA Congress in Bangkok, Thailand was a fantastic success, uniting all 211 FIFA Member Associations.
Firstly, congratulations to Brazil on winning a historic first FIFA Congress voting process to be elected as the hosts of the FIFA Women's World Cup™ 2027. My commiserations to Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany who also submitted a fantastic bid.
I was also grateful to receive unanimous support for our global stand against racism. Racism is something terrible – it is a scourge that exists in our society. And is one also that is infiltrated in football for too long. So, today at the FIFA Congress, following extensive consultation with current and former players passionate about making a change, I shared the five pillars of action for all 211 FIFA Member Associations to make a global stand against racism.
In my address I spoke about how, despite organising only a tiny percentage of club and national team matches worldwide, FIFA is unique in that it distributes its revenue around the world – with around 70 per cent of member associations relying on our support to arrange football in their territories.
With the one or two per cent of matches that FIFA hosts, FIFA is financing football all over the world. The revenues that we generate are not just going to a few clubs in one country. The revenues that we generate are going to 211 countries all over the world. There is no other organisation that does
that.
Our duty is to offer more opportunities everywhere in the world, the opportunity to play, dream, be involved and – sometimes – change life. Also, the opportunity to grow not only as a footballer but also as a human being.
Let us all be united in this divided world, because football gives us that opportunity and we must use it.