FIFA Master Alumni - Where are they now? - Ana Paola López Yrigoyen
Ana Paola López Yrigoyen
Current Position: Union and Player Relations Officer, FIFPRO
Year of graduation: 2024 (24th Edition)
Nationality: Mexican
What does your current role involve?
My position’s title is pretty telling, but at the same time too oversimplistic. As a former Mexican elite footballer, with experience at the national team level (U-17 World Cup, U-20, SNT) and domestically, pioneering the first five years of Liga MX Femenil, my role at FIFPRO focuses on building bridges between men and women professional footballers, players’ unions and football governing bodies. Specifically, yet not exclusively, in Spanish speaking countries and the American continent.
Therefore, on the one hand, I coordinate efforts across regions to ensure player interests are represented domestically and globally – through their respective national associations. On the other, I connect with players to gather direct feedback on critical issues like physical workload, non-payment, contractual breaches, workplace safety and fixture congestion to elevate their voice and shape those decisions which directly impact them and their working conditions across the game.
Which aspects of the FIFA Master course have helped you most in your career?
I strongly believe that the FIFA Master helped me take my career to another level and was key for me to start working at FIFPRO. As both a player – who had recently retired – and a well-known advocate in an emerging league, I applied in a moment of great personal and financial uncertainty. The FIFA Master course selection committee believed in me and provided a full tuition fee scholarship. This then allowed me to enter the most diverse, challenging and thrilling team I have ever “played” with.
Having the opportunity to build and be part of such an intimate yet global community in your classroom is life changing. Not just because you must adapt, but because you learn so much about your peers, alumni, teachers and guest lecturers: their backgrounds, experiences, struggles and ways to manage through life. You learn how to navigate unfamiliar environments as if they were your “own” and to manage cultural differences – not only with great doses of fun, but also under pressure. So, as you move on through the course modules and even after graduation, you realise that the meaningful connections you were able to make become differential when finding a place within the sports industry.
What advice would you give to future students?
Be true to yourselves and whatever passion or goal that brought you into the FIFA Master in the first place. Also, embrace the opportunities that you will have to connect and make friends with your classmates. Now, true connections sometimes come with its challenges, especially with such a diversity of lives, backgrounds and experiences in the same place for almost a year. But opening yourself up and being open, literally, to a world in a classroom is both thrilling in the moment, and so self-fulfilling in retrospective.
When you look back and realise who you became as a result of the FIFA Master, and that you remain so close to your classmates even after graduation, gives you true meaning and connection as you build your career in the sports industry.
FIFA Master - International Master in Management, Law and Humanities of Sport, ranked Europe's No.1 course a record 14 times by SportBusiness and No.2 in the world.
Organised by CIES in cooperation with De Montfort University (UK), SDA Bocconi School of Management (Italy) and the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland).
Applications for the next edition of the FIFA Master (September 2027 start) will open in early October 2026. Further information and the dedicated course application form is available at this link - https://www.cies.ch/education/fifa-master/apply-to-the-fifa-master
