Who Actually Runs Football?
FIFA, Confederations, and How the Game Is Structured
One of the most useful things I learned while studying football management was how football is actually organised.
Not who we deal with locally.
But how decisions flow from the very top of the game, through layers most people never see, and eventually land at club level.
Once you understand that structure, a lot of things that feel confusing or frustrating suddenly make more sense.
What FIFA actually is
At the very top of world football sits FIFA, which stands for Fédération Internationale de Football Association.
FIFA was founded in 1904 and is based in Switzerland.
Switzerland is not accidental. It has a long history of political neutrality and is home to many international governing bodies. FIFA sits there as a global regulator, not as a competition organiser.
FIFA does not run local leagues.
It does not manage clubs.
It does not pick teams.
What it does is govern the game globally, set overarching frameworks, and work through continental and national bodies to implement them.
How big the world game really is
FIFA’s reach is enormous.
There are roughly 195 recognised countries in the world, yet FIFA has 211 member associations.
That difference often surprises people, but it exists because football membership is not limited to modern political borders. Football recognises history, identity, and how the game developed, often long before today’s nation-states were defined.
The United Kingdom is the clearest example. It is one sovereign state, yet England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all have their own football associations. Those bodies existed before FIFA itself, and they remain independent members today.
In other cases, FIFA membership includes territories or regions that govern their own football competitions and meet FIFA’s criteria, even if they are not independent countries in a political sense.
Football’s map does not perfectly match the political map of the world. That is one of the reasons it truly earns the title the world game.
The pyramid of world football
Football is best understood as a pyramid, not a straight line.
At the top are global decision-makers.
At the base are the people who actually play, watch, and love the game.
The structure looks like this:
FIFA
Continental confederations
National and regional member associations
Clubs
Players
Special interest groups, including fans, referees, coaches, administrators, and volunteers
This pyramid matters, because decisions made high up do not disappear as they move downward. They land, eventually, at club level.
Confederations: the layer most people never hear about
FIFA does not deal directly with clubs or even leagues.
Instead, it works through six continental confederations, each responsible for football in its region.
Those confederations are:
Asian Football Confederation (AFC) – Asia
Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) – Europe
South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) – South America
Confederation of African Football (CAF) – Africa
Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) – North and Central America and the Caribbean
Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) – Oceania
Australia sits within the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), which is why decisions and frameworks developed in Asia matter here.
Asia is not one place
One of the biggest misunderstandings is the idea that “Asia” is a single football environment.
It isn’t.
The Asian Football Confederation has 47 member associations, covering an enormous geographic, cultural, and economic spread. From West Asia to East Asia, from island nations to global megacities, the scale is immense.
Because of that size, Asia is broken into zones and sub-regions for competitions, development, and administration. This helps manage travel, cost, and competitive balance, but it also adds layers of complexity.
Frameworks designed at this level are necessarily broad. How they land locally depends on national and regional implementation.
Australia’s move from Oceania to Asia
Australia was not always part of the Asian Football Confederation.
In 2006, Australia moved from the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) into Asia. The reasons were largely strategic.
Australia wanted:
stronger and more regular international competition
clearer World Cup qualification pathways
alignment with professional football standards
The move delivered those things, but it also brought new expectations, compliance frameworks, and administrative demands.
Being part of Asia meant operating within AFC systems, not just Australian ones.
The A-League anomaly
This structure also explains something many people find confusing.
Australia is part of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).
New Zealand is part of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC).
Yet A-League competitions include clubs from both countries.
This works through specific approvals and agreements between confederations and FIFA. It is unusual, but it exists because football structures sometimes prioritise competition integrity and commercial viability over neat geographic lines.
It is another reminder that football governance is layered, negotiated, and often more complex than it appears from the outside.
Club and country: a tension playing out right now
Watching the Africa Cup of Nations also brings into sharp focus the ongoing tension between club and country.
During the opening match between Morocco and Comoros, I found myself doing exactly what football often makes you do, reaching for a map.
Comoros is a small island nation in the Indian Ocean, located north-west of Madagascar. I had to look it up while watching the game, and it felt like a perfect reminder of just how global football really is.
Many of the players at the Africa Cup of Nations play their club football well outside Africa. Under FIFA regulations, clubs are required to release players for official international tournaments, even when those tournaments take place during domestic seasons.
This has been widely discussed by those following the English Premier League, where a large number of African players compete. The tournament falls during one of the busiest periods of the English season, with clubs juggling league matches, domestic cups, European competitions, and already congested schedules.
For players, the workload is intense. Long seasons, significant travel, and competing demands across club and international football are now the norm. For clubs, it presents real challenges around squad depth, fatigue, and continuity.
It is another example of how football’s global structures don’t stay abstract. Decisions made at FIFA and confederation level land, very directly, on clubs and competitions already operating at full stretch.
One country, one federation
Another important principle in world football is this:
Each country can have only one recognised national member federation.
That federation is responsible for governance, competitions, regulations, and alignment with FIFA and its confederation.
In Australia, that role sits with Football Australia, with state and regional bodies operating beneath it.
Clubs do not sit outside this system. They are part of it.
Why I’m explaining this
This structure was the first unit of my AFC Football Management Diploma, delivered through the Asian Football Confederation Academic Centre of Excellence, and titled Organisation of World Football.
Understanding it changed how I saw everything else.
Club licensing.
Coach accreditation.
Pathways.
Standards.
Compliance.
None of these systems exist in isolation. They are all downstream from this pyramid.
I’m writing this because many of the decisions that affect clubs, volunteers, players, and families happen quietly, several layers above where most people are looking.
Understanding how football is organised globally doesn’t fix every problem, but it does help explain why local realities are so often shaped by forces far beyond the local oval.
And once you understand the structure, the rest of the conversation becomes much clearer.