FIFA to pay winning club $2.3 million at first Women''s Champions Cup
Zurich (AP): FIFA will pay $2.3 million in prize money to the club that wins the first Women's Champions Cup at Arsenal's stadium next week.
The total fund detailed on Friday by FIFA will share $3.9 million among the six continental champions. The final stages in London are a warmup for a planned full Women's Club World Cup in 2028.
European champion Arsenal will play ASFAR of Morocco after Gotham from the United States plays Corinthians of Brazil in back-to-back semifinals on Wednesday at the home of Premier League club Brentford.
The final at Arsenal's stadium on Feb. 1 will follow a third-place game at the same venue.
The champion gets $2.3 million and the beaten finalist $1 million, with $200,000 paid to each of the losing semifinalists.
Two continental champions already eliminated in earlier rounds — Auckland United from Oceania and Wuhan Chegu Jiangda representing Asia — each get $100,000.
The prize money is “a clear statement of the belief in women's club football and the players, teams and competitions driving its continued rise,” FIFA secretary general Mattias Grafström said in a statement.
Arsenal got more than 1.5 million euros ($1.8 million) in prize money for winning the UEFA Women's Champions League last season.
FIFA paid $1 billion among 32 teams in the men's 2025 Club World Cup. That tournament in the United States was backed by Saudi Arabian money to ensure influential European clubs got the prize money they sought to agree to take part.
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Indian-origin lawyer at centre of landmark Supreme Court verdict against Trump
New York (PTI): At the centre of the landmark US Supreme Court verdict striking down President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs is an Indian-origin lawyer who argued before America’s highest court about the illegality of the levies.
Neal Katyal, the son of Indian immigrants and the former Acting Solicitor General of the United States under President Barack Obama, argued the consequential tariff case on behalf of small businesses and won.
“Victory,” Katyal posted on X shortly after the Supreme Court verdict came in on Friday.
Katyal, in an interview to MS Now, said “One of the great things about the American system is what just happened today. I was able to go to court - the son of immigrants — able to go to court and say on behalf of American small businesses, 'Hey, this President is acting illegally.'"
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"I was able to present my case, have them ask really hard questions at me, it was a really intense oral argument and at the end of it, they voted and we won,” he said.
“That is something so extraordinary about this country. The idea that we have a system that self-corrects, that allows us to say ‘You might be the most powerful man in the world but you still can’t break the Constitution. That to me is what today is about,” he added.
Katyal was born in 1970 in Chicago to a paediatrician mother and engineer father, both of whom immigrated from India.
Katyal is a partner in the Washington DC office of Milbank LLP and a member of the firm’s Litigation & Arbitration Group.
In a statement following the verdict, he said the US Supreme Court stood up for the rule of law and Americans everywhere.
“Its message was simple: Presidents are powerful, but our Constitution is more powerful still. In America, only Congress can impose taxes on the American people. The US Supreme Court gave us everything we asked for in our legal case. Everything.”
Katyal expressed gratitude for the leadership of the Liberty Justice Centre, who “led the fight when others wouldn’t”.
"This case has always been about the presidency, not any one president. It has always been about separation of powers, and not the politics of the moment. I'm gratified to see our Supreme Court, which has been the bedrock of our government for 250 years, protect our most fundamental values,” he said.
According to his profile on the Milbank website, Katyal focuses on appellate and complex litigation and has argued 54 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.
He has also served as a law professor for over two decades at Georgetown University Law Centre, “where he was one of the youngest professors to have received tenure and a chaired professorship in the university's history” and has served as a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale law schools.
A graduate of Yale Law School, Katyal clerked for Guido Calabresi of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as well as for Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the US Supreme Court.
He also served in the Deputy Attorney General's Office at the Justice Department as National Security Advisor and as Special Assistant to the Deputy Attorney General during 1998-1999.
Katyal is the recipient of the “highest award given to a civilian” by the US Department of Justice, the Edmund Randolph Award, which was presented to him by the Attorney General in 2011, his profile said.
The Chief Justice of the United States appointed him in 2011 and 2014 to the Advisory Committee on Federal Appellate Rules.
In a post on X dated November 4, 2025, Katyal posted a photograph of a traditional ‘Kada’ (bangle) placed on a ‘Brief for Private Respondents’ related to the Supreme Court tariff case against Trump.
“Thinking of my father first and foremost, who came to this land of freedom….May the Constitution win,” Katyal wrote.
