Ellen Wille (born ) is a Norwegian football director and teacher known for being the first woman to speak in the FIFA Congress. She is sometimes described as the "mother of football".
Biography Ellen Wille is from Oslo, Norway, and formerly a secondary school science teacher. Unaware of the fact that football was opened to girls, she initially played handball and joined the amateur handball department of Sportsklubben Frigg in 1971. The same year, she founded the Norway Cup with Torgeir Røyert and the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet; the newspaper also reported an unofficial football competition founded by her temmates and her after using a football during training. Five years later, claiming that no one took them seriously, Wille joined the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF), which have only recognised women's clubs in 1975. Wille became an NFF executive in 1985, the first woman to do so.
In 1986, during the 45th FIFA Congress, which was held in Mexico, Wille became the first woman to address the FIFA Congress. The audience, which was male-dominated, included then Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) president João Havelange and general secretary Sepp Blatter, who later succeeded Havelange as FIFA president. Although the exact wordings of the speech was lost, FIFA confirmed that she asked Blatter to "draw more attention to women's football, particularly in terms of refereeing and the form of international tournaments". Blatter later commented that she "criticised" FIFA because they have not included women's football in their annual report. The speech was attributed to help the creation of the 1988 FIFA Women's Invitation Tournament in China and the FIFA Women's World Cup, with its first edition being held also in China in 1991.
Wille's playing career ended in 1993 with Asker Fotball.
See also Women's football in Norway
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