The new World 7s Series caused a stir in the women’s game when it rocked up with a new format of the sport last year.

First held in Portugal in May, the new 7v7 version of the game brought together bizarre team entries, weird and whacky celebrations, but some of the biggest club and player names in the European game, such as Bayern Munich, Ajax, Benfica, and Manchester’s City and United.

Its second version, held in Miami over the winter, was more USA/Mexico-centric, meaning it went a little more under the radar in Europe, but watching closely was the Saga Sports Group, more specifically Danish duo Bettina Kuperman and Majken Gilmartin, co-founders of the Sensational League, another new 7v7 competition coming initially to Copenhagen in April.

It won’t have the star-studded names of the World 7s, but in many ways the concept is more intriguing.

This is a longer-term concept, with players drafted to the initial eight teams by the eight team captains, trials for players who have applied in January, a pre-season in February and March, and games from April all the way through to the finals in August.

It will mix sport and entertainment in a way the women’s game hasn’t seen before, will be played with a football designed specifically for female players, broadcast live on YouTube, and crucially ensuring every player will be paid a proper wage for their participation.

The Sensational League’s website puts it simply, “Champions are crowned for winning matches, growing their following, and amplifying women’s sports through community projects.”

“They [World 7s] have a very model to ours,” says Kuperman, who has worked on bids for Olympics’ and European Championships, as well as for the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup.

“They have set a grand slam model, tapping into the existing sport model, building something for the top clubs, and while that is great, I’ve worked in organised sport for 25 years and it is a system where change happens very slowly, which is why we’ve gone with a disruptor format.

“We’re doing something different. Our entire IP is more the icon/ballers league space, or maybe unrivalled basketball is much closer to what we are doing, filling that gap between a disruptor format and digitally driven leagues, with an eye on female fanbases, a very under-served fan segment of a very, very big consumer group – women who like sports.

“There’s a lot of us, even if people want to pretend we’re not there, and we’re very, very passionate about sport.”

Kuperman and Gilmartin have worked in international sport for almost three decades and after years abroad came came together again 18 months ago, quickly deciding this was a place in the market they could exploit and build something for the long-term.

Why they are doing it is something Kuperman is only too happy to go into great detail about.

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“The potential is there,” says Englishman Colin Bell, speaking from a training camp in Spain.

The former Champions League-winning coach is in Murcia with China’s Under 20s, a return to the Asian scene after spending a period coaching Korea Republic to a World Cup in 2023.

It means he is speaking about the second most populated country in the world, in response to a question about why China has yet to become a powerhouse on the world stage when it comes to football.

Bell’s Under 20s have just pushed England’s equivalents all the way and will also face both Mexico and the USA before returning home, three vital tests as Bell readies his side for the Under 20 Asia Cup in Thailand early next year.

“I just think the country is massive,” he says, explaining why they are perhaps yet to fulfil their potential as a nation, continuing, “I’m sure there are players I’ve not even seen and that we don’t know about.

“I think the biggest factor is the system makes life difficult. In the Under 20s, we have players who haven’t played a match since June, while others have played six matches in the last few weeks, so it’s difficult to put your finger on what we can change and influence, but there’s a lot of work to be done.”

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Yes, it’s the UEFA Women’s Champions League, and it’s been taking place in locations stretching from Kosovo to Ireland, Albania to North Macedonia, and Luxembourg to Slovakia.

As it has for the past few years, the first qualifying round takes on the format of a set of six mini tournaments, each with four teams in it.

Two seeded teams play two unseeded teams in three of the groups for a place in the final and a potential spot in the second qualifying round – which this year is also a taking on a mini tournament format.

One of the many quirks remains the fact the matches within each group take place in one central location, across one leg, with no two-legged home and away matches, giving the host team an advantage to a certain extent.

It should be added, this article is in no way a dig at UEFA’s format, but a voyage to find out just how some of Europe’s minnows negotiate tricky logistical journeys, very much “luck of the draw”, as some put it, and the financial costs that come with it.

Speaking to those involved over the past few weeks, I found out to what extent UEFA actually go to in order to make it work for all involved, but also the issues that still remain, and changes some of the clubs involved would like to see.

So, this is how some of Europe’s early hopefuls make the journeys across half a continent or more, with a group of part-time players and staff, all in search of a spot in the second qualifying round, and maybe not even that.

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“In terms of logistics, we were quite lucky in the sense Malta is well connected with Vienna, and in the summer, also Bratislava,” admits Timmy Gingell, Chief Executive Officer of Maltese side Swieqi United.

Based just outside the capital of Valletta on the popular holiday island, Swieqi are embarking on a first ever participation in European competition, headed to a small town of just 10,000 people in Slovakia, where the team who gets their name from the town in question, Spartak Myjava, are hosting Swieqi, as well as Moldova’s Agarista Anenii Noi, and Montenegro’s Buducnost Pogdorica.

Since we spoke, Swieqi beat Agarista 5-0 on Wednesday to set up a meeting with hosts Myjava on Saturday.

“In terms of flying, it is not much of a challenge, excluding the costs of the flights. We flew to Vienna on Monday morning, and then it is down to our hosts to arrange transport to where we are staying, which is a much bigger town about 40 minutes from Myjava. That’s better for the girls because we are here until Sunday and there is more for them to do.”

Gingell instantly brings up an important and pertinent point, that while there are perks to hosting, it is on all six host teams to accommodate their visitors, and they are given a grant by UEFA to cover hotel costs and transport inside the country for the teams making the journey.

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“It’s something in my career I never thought was possible or thought would happen, so to be so close to kick off now, it’s pretty surreal.”

The words of former Canada national team goalkeeper Stephanie Labbé, speaking about the impending historic birth of the new Northern Super League, the nation’s first ever professional women’s soccer league.

Labbé, who earned 86 caps for her country, is one of several legends of the country involved in the new six-team league across various capacities, and as General Manager of Vancouver Rise, Labbé will have involvement in Wednesday night’s opener when they host Calgary Wild in the city’s historic BC Place.

Christine Sinclair, one of Canada’s greatest ever players, is also involved in the club, while others, such as Diana Matheson, helped to get the league off the ground as co-founder.

Others, like Desiree Scott, Quinn and Erin McLeod, all national team veterans, have returned home to play in the league, and while an initial six teams mean it is baby steps, there’s a well-earned sense of excitement across the country.

“Those are the names who are actively involved,” says Labbé, continuing, “but I don’t know if you can put an emotion on how this feels. Surreal, excitement, pride, but on the flip there’s a feeling of ‘I can’t believe it’s taken this long’, but there’s so many who have paved the way.

“Players in the 90s, the 00s, the players who fought for Canada to even have a national team, the first players who went and played professionally overseas, all these people who continue to fight for women to play sport. Yes, we’re years behind other countries, but we’re excited to now be in the conversation and hopefully propel ourselves to the top end of that conversation pretty quickly.”

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As Labbé alludes to, it’s been one of the curiosities of Canada for many years now. Until last summer, the country was the defending Olympic gold medallists, regularly competing at the business end of major tournaments, doing it all without a professional domestic league.

In many respects, the fact many were forced to seek top leagues abroad and many who went into the NWSL, such as the aforementioned Scott and Quinn, possibly aided the national team’s strength in depth, but potentially hindered their youth pathway, and now the country has the opportunity to develop its own players within its own borders.

“The reason Canada has been able to do well at national team level is that’s where all the investment and wealth was,” says Matheson, one of the most capped players of all time with 206 appearances for Canada, and co-founder of the NSL alongside business partner Thomas Gilbert.

“Hosting the World Cup in 2015, Canada did enough to invest in that space and a big enough player pool, even with the limited pathway available, we had enough of that top tier talent to compete on the biggest stages.

“Now, all the investment is going into the professional game, the leagues, that’s where players now spend most of their time and we knew it was only a matter of time here in Canada that we were going to fall further behind unless we started to invest in that domestic game and build more professional pathways and have more talent come out of our own country.

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“There was a moment in the opening match in North Carolina…we had 10,000 fans in the stands, a guy came down from the sky holding the match ball, handed it off to our female-led ownership group, that moment felt surreal. It was like, ‘wow, we made it’...”

They are the words of Amanda Vandervort, President of the new USL Super League, the USA’s second professional top division league, which is now quickly reaching the conclusion of its inaugural season.

Vandervort, former Chief Women’s Football Officer for FIFPro, has been at the head of the project since its initial announcement, appointed just a month after the USL confirmed it would be launching a new women’s league.

“In that moment in Carolina, it quickly changed to ‘what’s next?!’ How are we building every day and setting out to make the impact we set out to make,” Vandervort enthuses.

On how it all came about, she continues, “There’s two answers. The USL CEO had intentions to launch this 10 or so years ago, so this is not anything that was a recent spark or off the cuff. It was very intentional and very planned, but for me personally it was about four years ago.

“I started talking to the USL about if I was the right person to come in and lead it. For me, it’s been a lifetime of a spark, to be able to build a player-first, fan-centric league has been a dream for me, so it was a perfect fit, coming together at the same time as the industry itself was strengthening – that was magic.”

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The initial plan was for the USL Super League to launch with second division status, therefore not viewed as a direct rival to the NWSL, but that changed in 2023 when it was announced the intention was now to be a first division league, in order to increase professionalism, including minimum costs, standards, and staff numbers, among other criterias.

In February 2024, US Soccer granted the league the status it was craving, ensuring the USA would have two fully professional, but completely separate, top divisions.

Eight clubs signed up for the inaugural season, which kicked off last August, in Brooklyn, Carolina, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Fort Lauderdale, Lexington, Spokane and Tampa, bringing top-level women’s sport to some huge markets which didn’t have an NWSL side.

They’ll be joined by Jacksonville and Madison in 2025, with further franchises in Palm Beach, Rogers, Boise, East Ridge, Indianapolis, Oakland, Phoenix and Tucson announcing their intentions to join in the future.

Vandervort in particular is delighted to see the interest from big markets around the country in the new league.

“I think the main point is of course it’s an opportunity for players, but what you see too now is it’s a real business opportunity. There are owners and investors in each of these cities seeing it as a smart investment, and that’s a shift in the marketplace.

“It’s a good business investment, people who love women’s soccer, who want to see it thrive, and organisations who want to invest. For us, it’s about when we bring them on, they’re fully revved up and ready to go.”

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Olympique Lyonnais, or Lyon as we have come to better know them, remain one of the most successful clubs in the history of the women’s game.

A record 17 league titles since 2007, a record eight Champions League trophies since 2011, plus 13 domestic cups to go with it, under the guidance of former owner Jean-Michel Aulas, the Lyon name has become synonymous with women’s football.

It was though only 2004 when France’s third biggest city came under the banner of Olympique Lyonnais, yet the history of what came before is little known outside of the country.

Before it became the dominant entity it is today, an independent side by the name of FC Lyon was the home of women’s football in the city, founded by a group of volunteers soon after women’s football was officially recognised by the French Football Federation in 1970.

The first league championship took place in 1974, but until 1992 it was split into three regional championships, with nationwide play-offs between the top two/three in each region for the overall title.

For so long, Parisian side VGA Saint-Maur ruled the roost, between 1985 and 1990 winning every league title bar one, beating FC Lyon in their first triumph in the mid-1980s.

FC Lyon meanwhile had to wait until 1991 to reach another final, and this is the story of how an inaugural success laid the foundations for what is in place today, a star-studded team of world superstars still enjoying success on a global level…

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“My father played football, he always took me with him to the field, so I always wanted to play football,” says Marie Arnal, who joined FC Lyon in 1989.

“When I was around five or six, I went to Club Sportif Charcot in Lyon and played there with the boys until I was 13. It was then I was forced to join a women’s team and FC Lyon was the best club for girls at the time, so I went to play there.”

Two years later, while just 15 years old, Arnal would play a pivotal role in FC Lyon’s first ever title, but she was joined by a team of players either local to the area or were even representing the national team at that time.

There is very little information about women’s football in France stretching back to the early 1990s when FC Lyon enjoyed a period of success which would bring three more league titles, in 1993, 1995 and 1998, as well as two French Cups in 2003 and 2004 before the club was absorbed into Olympique Lyonnais.

“The years I played for FC Lyon, I was in school,” recalls Arnal, now 48. “Women’s football was completely amateur, we paid to play and paid for our own kit and equipment. My school hours were the same as everyone else.

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If you’re not a follower of French domestic football, you may have missed the news that in the summer just passed, the league previously known as Division 1 became the Premiere Ligue, with Arkema remaining as a primary sponsor. Divison 2 has also been re-branded as the Seconde Ligue.

Why? The clue is in the name, France now has a premier professional league at the top of its women’s football pyramid.

Given Lyon’s stranglehold over Europe for many a year gone by, combined with PSG’s financial riches, you’d be forgiven for thinking France had always had a strong foundation, but below the top two, it’s been a struggle over the years for many to compete, with many lop-sided scorelines when facing either of the nation’s two giants of the women’s game.

The changes have been equally substantial as they have significant, and even if it doesn’t mean the progress will be evident overnight, those involved are keen to stress it’s only the beginning of a longer-term project.

The budget for the two leagues under the new Ligue Feminine de Football Professionel banner has gone up 33% from the 2023/24 season to £10m euros, while it is mandatory that each club must now have a minimum of 11 full-time players on paid professional contracts, while in the Seconde Ligue it’s 11 part-time contracts.

It means there are now around 230 full-time players in the Première Ligue, while each club is allowed to sign a fourth non-EU player to its squad, and must have 11 full-time players in their squads, though the latter is not linked to club licencing rules and is a wider rule.

The new structure is headed up Jean-Michel Aulas, long-time President of Lyon’s women’s team, which he invested in significantly from 2004 onwards, turning them into one of the powerhouses of the women’s game.

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Beneath him, he employed a set of people well-versed to help run a new professional league, including Vice President Andreea Koenig, a former Executive Director for the likes of Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan.

“We are probably where the Women’s Super League was in about 2018,” says Koenig. “The league only became professional in July. We’re still within the FFF and rely on their funding, we don’t have a body like WPLL [Women’s Professional Leagues Limited] behind it, but the idea is to fully professionalise the clubs and the game.

“Why I think it’s one of the most interesting projects is we’ve been able to look at all the leagues in all the countries and steal the best practices, while avoiding what’s been proven not to work.”

She continues, “For example, we looked at basketball in France. They have something we really like; they have finances set aside for certain achievements to incentivise teams. For example, if you’re a team in the top three attendances in the league, they get more money for working hard to increase their attendances. That is the incentive.

“We request a minimum in the licence in terms of staffing, infrastructure, training facilities for players – that is the obligation..., but we must be careful not to ask for too much because we don’t want a situation like what happened with Reading in England. We try to be mindful and have the right balance between incentive and obligation, and we’re also very mindful we’re doing this in a year which is difficult for the men’s game here in France.

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As Emma Hayes prepares to walk out at a familiar arena to her in the form of Wembley Stadium on Saturday night, she does so as an Olympic gold medalist with the USA, but her legacy in South West London will be far from forgotten.

Since winning her first piece of silverware midway through 2015 at the same venue she will grace on Saturday, Hayes began to lay the foundations three years earlier when she took on the job post-2012 Olympics, returning from a near decade in the USA, where she coached the Long Island Lady Riders, Iona Gaels and the Chicago Red Stars.

That legacy will go beyond the multiple Women’s Super League, FA Cup and Continental Cup titles, the origins of which stretch back to the moment she walked through the door, inheriting a Chelsea side sitting closer to the bottom of the table than the top.

One man well placed to offer a view on how things changed is Robbie Udberg, who had been working in the Chelsea girls’ academy before Hayes’s arrival and become a pivotal part of her first coaching staff until he departed in 2018.

Udberg had taken charge for one game against Arsenal in between the resignation of Matt Beard and hiring of Hayes, admitting he had “cobbled together a group of staff” for the match after many left with Beard.

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As part of a Premium subscription, you can access my exclusive interview with Emma during her final week at Chelsea.

“For me, personally and professionally, she was transformational,” says Udberg. “She said ‘look, I need someone who knows the club. I’ve heard good things about you and would like your involvement to be bigger than it is now’.

“My first impression was ‘this is someone who has got a plan’. Her first focus was putting some structure to the department which didn’t exist prior to that.”

Having returned from the USA where the game was well ahead of England from a professional point of view at that time, as well as having a spell as assistant at Arsenal, the club closest to a professional programme in England.

Hayes set about replicating what she had experienced in her new home, with the caveat being a lack of support from the club for the women’s team up until that point.

Chelsea Ladies, as they were known in 2012, was run by the Chelsea Foundation, headed by Simon Taylor, and didn’t come under the banner of the club itself until several years later.

Hayes brought in Paul Green, previously head coach at Doncaster Rovers Belles, who she had met several times and been impressed by, while goalkeeper coach Stuart Searle also became a permanent member of the staff after working in the boys’ academy.

It was a foursome which would stand the test of time, with Green still at the club as General Manager, and Searle having only departed to join Hayes in the USA.

But Hayes went further with her desire for change.

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Few are talking about it, but just north of the English border, one of the closest and most competitive domestic top divisions anywhere in the world right now is shaping up as we approach the end of the first half of the season for those who kicked off their usual winter league schedules back in the autumn.

Yes, the Scottish Women’s Premier League currently has its top five teams separated by just five points, and that’s not something often seen in a nation where Glasgow’s big three of Glasgow City, Celtic and Rangers have dominated the landscape.

But this season, Edinburgh duo Hearts and Hibernian are right there, with the former just four points off leaders Glasgow City and local rivals Hibernian just a point further behind, level with current champions Celtic.

Elena Sadiku’s side have struggled to keep up the pace amidst a busy debut Champions League campaign and lost 1-0 to Hearts earlier in the season, while for so long the country’s dominant side, Glasgow City have also come roaring back this season to currently lead the way.

Last season, Hearts finished 14 points off third place, with Hibernian a further three points back, but two different development pathways have seen the whole pack close right up this season, and it’s making for a breath-taking domestic campaign in a country which is also developing some top players on the European landscape.

This is not to diminish past achievements from history books, because Hibernian are three-times Scottish champions and have a combined total of 15 domestic cups too, but the last time anyone outside Glasgow won the league title was the Hibs themselves all the way back in 2007.

For the green side of Edinburgh, it’s been a progressive journey back to the top, while for the Jambos, it’s been more about rapid and innovative progression since hiring young Spanish head coach Eva Olid in 2021.

Working alongside assistant Sean Burt, who has now taken on the role of Head of Recruitment, the pair have worked diligently to ensure Hearts become a regular challenger at the top end of the SWPL.

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“This is our fourth season working together,” says Burt. “When we first came in, the team was practically amateur. The club had a long-term strategy to turn us into a full-time team and every player now has some form of a paid contract.

“You can argue the investment has increased, but if I’m being transparent, the infrastructure we have is now on the level of a Women’s Super League team in terms of facilities, staff, the way the whole club is structured.

“You’ve now got myself in a dedicated Head of Recruitment role rather than doing both, it’s the things that give us the best chance off the pitch to be better on it. It’s been a great start, the progress has been great, going from trying to stay up to top four finishes and a cup final. It’s been a long-term thing.”

39-year-old Olid was an intriguing appointment when hired in 2021 after previous experience back home in Spain, as well as the USA, but stability earned her a new two-year deal in 2023 which will expire at the end of this season.

She guided Hearts to a first cup final which ended in a 2-0 defeat to Rangers last season, but now in the midst of a genuine title race, she is pleased to be able to see the hard work being done off the pitch come to fruition on it.

“We had a process, some transition years,” says Olid. “The previous three years we had a lot of changes and this season we had the right things in place. We don’t quite have the resources of the top three, but we are a professional team now. The objective is bigger than previous years, we are no longer happy being fourth, we really want to break that top three and I think we’ve shown we can do that.

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“I’d have never thought 10 years on I’d be sat here at Melwood, still at Liverpool,” says Gemma Bonner, 10 years on from the most dramatic final day the Women’s Super League has thrown up in its fourteen year existence.

On the final day of the 2014 season, on 12^th October, Liverpool sat third in what was then just an eight-team league - the lack of games ensuring close finishes - but on this occasion any of the top three could still win the title going into the final round of games.

Even the build-up had set up the tension, with Fara Williams’ brilliant and bizzarre halfway line winner against rivals Birmingham City sealing a late win, while Liverpool had kept themselves in it by coming back to draw 3-3 in stoppage time against Arsenal a week earlier.

"There were lots of little things in the melting pot,” recalls Birmingham manager at the time, David Parker. “We drew 0-0 with Everton a month before and it really cost us. We were huge rivals because they were the big club with Arsenal before the WSL and we sort of took that second spot for that first few years.

“We went to them at Widnes and drew 0-0 and Everton went down without winning a game, that ultimately cost us the title. Fara's goal cost us a Champions League spot, it won Liverpool the league, stopped Chelsea and put us third. Even before the final day drama, Fara won the league that day with that goal."

Matt Beard’s Liverpool side, looking to defend their first title won 12 months earlier, were rank outsiders, with Chelsea leading the way and Birmingham City the main chasers.

Liverpool were at home to Bristol Academy, while Chelsea and Birmingham City faced banana skin clashes against Manchester City and Notts County respectively.

“No one expected us to win the league,” adds Bonner. “We started the morning in third and needed all the other results to go our way, plus a goal difference swing. We could only control our result and see what happened elsewhere.”

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It was, in the end, a day which would put the WSL on the wider map, pre the initial boom of the Lionesses which would follow less than 12 months later at the 2015 World Cup.

A TV deal with BT Sports was well utilised, with the channel showing Manchester City vs Chelsea as its main game, given the latter were favourites to win a first title, but had cameras in both Liverpool and Nottingham to cut to immediately if goals went in elsewhere.

Three teams being in with a shout also presented challenges for those behind the scenes, with key FA staff positioned at each venue, all in communication with each other, nobody any the wiser as to where the trophy would be heading.

“From a football point of view, it was the most exhilarating, crazy day,” recalls Kelly Simmons, former Director of Women’s Football at the FA. “5 Live covered it, BT covered it, the title changed hands almost by the minute and it was probably one of the most high-profile days because three teams could win it and so much could happen.

“It was fantastic for the league, but operationally it was a nightmare. We had two trophies, three clubs, all in three different parts of the country!”

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One key area which continues to develop and evolve as the women’s game grows around the world is the infamous transfer window.

In FIFA’s 2024 mid-year report, statistics showed transfer expenditure had more than doubled from 12 months ago to $6.8m around the world.

Unsurprisingly, given the stature of the country in football, the success of the Lionesses in recent years, a league filled now with 12 Premier League-backed club and lucrative sponsorship and TV deals compared to some of their rival leagues, a good chunk of that $6.8m came in the Barclays Women’s Super League.

$2.33m, to be precise, compared to $1.35m in Spain and $1.14m in the USA, the only other two leagues to break the $1m barrier.

It means every transfer window is getting both bigger and busier, and this summer saw moves such as Vivianne Miedema to Manchester City, Sandy Baltimore to Chelsea, Mariona Caldentey to Arsenal and many more, with even the clubs near the bottom recruiting from far and wide, and the likes of Brighton & Hove Albion luring names such as Fran Kirby and Nikita Parris.

Many clubs now have dedicated recruitment staff, such as Manchester United with Head of Recruitment Harvey Bussell, or West Ham United with their equivalent in Mark Higgins and Brighton with Ed Gallagher.

Others frame the titles differently, such as Player Recruitment Officer Kevin Murphy at Arsenal, while even some Championship clubs now like London City Lionesses, Birmingham City and even newly promoted Portsmouth have dedicated recruitment staff.

Combined with a rise in data usage across the board, with WFC being told by several sources more and more clubs are now leaning on data and statistics to lead their recruitment strategies, it shows have much the transfer window is evolving year on year, and in the WSL the international incomings are going up and up with every window.

One club which certainly reaped the benefits last season was Leicester City, with Finland international Jutta Rantala in particular one of the signings of the season, as well as January recruit Yuka Momiki.

The financial might of the WSL means even clubs in the relegation battles can attract players from top clubs in some of the lesser ranked nations, but it’s too simplistic to suggest clubs are simply splashing the cash without a dedicated recruitment programme in place.

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“I think that’s credit to our analyst and our data analyst for going out and finding these players, because at the end of the day that’s where it starts and then those players get brought to us,” said former interim head coach, Jen Foster.

“They were the guys who found Jutta and the likes of Yuka and Saori [Takarada] too. That’s a huge benefit for us, in terms of Jutta’s performances and the impact she’s had, it’s been huge.

Liverpool too reaped the rewards of smart investment last season, with Matt Beard’s side climbing to fourth in the league, finishing above Manchester United.

Midfielder Fuka Nagano was a key acquisition, as was Austria’s Marie Höbinger, forward Sophie Roman Haug and speedy winger Mia Enderby, while at the back the partnership of Grace Fisk and Jenna Clark, both also signed last summer, proved pivotal.

“I think first and foremost when we’re looking at the personnel we want to bring in, we’ll look at data and clips, but for me one of the first things we do in any call we have is just getting to know them,” said Beard.

“At that point, when you’re talking to a player, you know they’re a good player, but you want a good balance and if I look at our midfield for example, we had [Missy] Bo [Kearns] and Marie who have shared that tennis role, if you like, back and forth. Ceri [Holland]’s been amazing with her physicality, I think she’s got everything. You’ve got Fuka as well, the midfield balance was really important to me.”

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This weekend, the road to Wembley starts for hundreds of clubs who have decided to enter the Adobe Women’s FA Cup this season.

288 teams will play across the country on Sunday in the first qualifying round of the tournament, none with any realistic chance of making May’s showpiece occasion, but all with the same dream, and all able to say they played in one of the sport’s most historic competitions.

Last year, there were scorelines ranging from 8-6 to 21-1 to 32-0, and while many teams don’t enter year on year, that offers the opportunity for new faces, and there are many embarking on their first ever FA Cup journey this season.

While a browse down the draw list will show more established names such as Sheffield Wednesday, there are some stories that really standout, with unique backgrounds and which paint a picture of what this competition is all about.

“When we got the email saying we could have a go at it…” says Emily Wallis, President of FXSU, the Student Union of Falmouth & Exeter University in Cornwall.

Yes, there is a Student Union team in the first qualifying around, along with an academy of girls set up by a former Football League playe and a Royal Navy air station base, just a few among many other incredible and quirky stories.

“I’d been speaking to the previous President like ‘shall we just go for it?!’” continues Wallis, who will also be playing for the team on Sunday. “It might be a bit hard to get players together, but it’s the FA Cup at the end of the day!

“This is the first time I’ve ever been part of a team that’s been in the FA Cup, so it’s very brand new to me! I just received an email from our league secretary saying we could apply if we wanted to. Like you say, it’s the FA Cup, it’s something we can say we’ve done, so we thought ‘why not?’ At least we’ve tried.”

428 miles north, the GT7 Academy will also be hoping to create history on its first foray into the competition, when they face Darlington away in the opening round of qualifiers.

The name comes from the two former players who set it up six years ago, Shaun Gardner and Garry Thompson, and they’ve made their women’s team a priority, and while it’s a young side, they too are living the dream this weekend.

“Garry was coming to the end of his career, he was down at Wycombe and Notts Country, but he’d spent 10 years at Morecambe and then came back to Morecambe,” says Gardner, who is on camp in France with one of his teams, but will be heading back to England in time for Sunday’s big game.

“Through a mutual friend we knew of each other, but with Garry down south we didn’t know each other too formally. I was going into schools doing coaching and a friend said Garry should speak to me, so we met up and everything I thought football should be about, Garry was on the same page.

“Environment-led, essentially. I was at Sheffield United, Blackburn Rovers and Carlisle United when I was younger. He was at Sheffield Wednesday, then Preston.

“We both got stopped from playing with our school teams so we really wanted to focus on grassroots where kids could get UEFA standard coaching but still play with their friends.”

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At their first open day in 2018, 34 kids turned up, and they had to cancel their first game just four years ago because they only had nine players available.

Now they have over 500 boys and girls at their Kendal base, and have just created a reserve team on the women’s side of the academy, with a pathway all the way from under 7s level to under 16s.

“The ladies is our flagship,” Gardner continues. “We don’t have a senior men’s team, we have a pathway for the girls. On Sunday, there’s a girl who has just turned 16 who will play and her mum played four years ago and set up the team herself. There’s a lot of poetic stories to it.

“Me and Garry take a financial hit, but we don’t see it that way. We support and back the manager, we help out where we can, it’s great to see the girls from where we started. It took us until near the end of the season to even get our first goal. This year is the first year we have a number of girls and the pathway is in full flow, so the future looks bright and we’re excited to be in the FA Cup.”

Like FXSU, this is the first time GT7 is entering the competition, but they’ve risen through the leagues after earning promotion and then being pushed up a further level during a restructure of the lower leagues, meaning they’ve come up against the likes of Wigan Athletic and Blackburn Rovers in the past few years, and now participate in the North West Counties Championship.

“It’s coming on in our area, there’s five teams now within about 10-15 minutes. When we started six years ago, there was one.

“We’re between Penrith and Lancaster. Morecambe take players from the Kendal region but get players from the Manchester clubs. Penrith cover everything out west and we’re kind of in the middle. It’s brilliant, because there are players who played previously who had stopped and have come back to play for us.”

Back down in the South West, Andrew Plenty is preparing for another big day with RNAS Culdrose, a Royal Navy air station team also based in Cornwall, who unlike their local counterparts are entering the competition for the third time.

Plenty has done everything from reserve team manager, first team manager, assistant of the women’s team, as well as secretary and treasurer across his 31 years with the club, and is currently waiting for a bar delivery ahead of Sunday’s home game against Saltash Borough.

“Our women’s team was formed in 2014,” Plenty says. “We’re part of the Royal Navy air station down in Cornwall, so the club is the largest UK armed forces sports clubs, but we never really had a female pathway.

“We started the journey with the women and one youth team, now we have a full pathway from under 8s to under 18s.”

He admits they have had a “few quirks” over the years, one in particular which has led to them coining the nickname “The Phoenix’s”.

“With the nature of the navy we lost all our best players. At the start of one season we had five or six players, so we created a mum’s club and they kept the team going, hence the nickname Phoenix’s.

“Although we completed the season, we did make the headlines for the wrong reasons. The Mirror ran a story about us losing to our main rivals at Helston down the road [the game finished 40-0], but by the end of the season we had more competitive games.

“If you roll on a few years, we won the league, a few girls came back from deployment. We won the Cornwall Division Two in 2022, then were runners-up straight away in Division One in 2023, so it was a great run and a bit of a step change from when we were teaching mum’s about set-pieces.”

Plenty originally joined RNAS Culdrose as a player at 19 when he first joined the naval air station, so it’s another momentous day for him in particular, as it is everyone involved in the competition, whether it be for the first time or not.

“My wife played as well. She was a youth coach with the under 16s last season and got nominated for female coach of the year by the Cornwall FA, which was lovely. She’s taken those girls from under 8s and a few of those have stepped up and will be playing in the FA Cup on Sunday.”

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Down the road in Falmouth, there is an equal buzz, even if Wallis admits she is “nervous” for the big occasion, but is proud of how far the team has come, especially given the social aspect of being a Student Union team too.

“The league secretary said not that many teams from Cornwall apply, so we thought it would be a nice way to gain some more recognition. We had a few American players last season, we have people come from all over the country.”

Wallis, now a second-year student who first started playing age eight in her home in Cambridgeshire, admits it will be nice to “gain some recognition”, but despite a regional draw have a three-hour journey to face Stoke Gabriel and Torbay Police, based on the northern coast of Cornwall near Totnes.

All the teams have their challenges, and being a university team with players from elsewhere, FXSU’s are stronger than most given this is their first game of the season, with their local regional league yet to start.

“Our season starts late, so it’s hard to get people in for pre-season. People go home, everyone’s all over the country, so preparing is quite difficult.

“But I’ve played since I was a kid, so this is not something I thought I’d ever do, but here we are! The girls are really excited for this, hopefully it lives up to expectations.”

She hopes it will give everyone a “boost” off the back of the team earning promotion last season, as well as potentially attracting more local girls to the university, with the team playing its games in the South West Division of The Earthbound Electrical Cornwall Women's Football League.

“I’m really proud, actually. I hope it does attract more girls, hopefully it puts us on the map a little bit. My dad said something very similar, actually, the team is mainly students from all over, but we’re more than happy to take local girls.”

For some though, the realities bite hard.

The i21 international academy, primarily made up of American students, has had to withdraw from the competition due to the dates of being able to register their players returning from the USA for the new season.

Head of Coaching, Bryan Hughes, another ex-pro for the likes of Hull City and Birmingham City , explains by email the troubles the team have hit which has led to them pulling out of their match against Washington.

Because their players are students, the academic year technically starts on Sunday 1st September, the day of the first qualifying round, and combined with the extra time it takes for American players to go through the clearance process, i21 have been unable to field a team.

“When we made the decision to enter into the FA Cup this season, it was done so having made the assumption that given the previous season's start dates we would have more than enough time to secure International Clearance and our students would be back;

2022 - 2023 - Sunday September 11th

2023 - 2024 - Sunday September 10th

“The earlier start dates this season has caught us out, and we have been working tirelessly to try and find appropriate solutions and outcomes, but unfortunately we have had to inform the FA we will have to withdraw from the competition.

“We were desperate to play in the competition, and asked the FA if the tie could be played during the midweek as we were confident of having the squad back. Unfortunately for us they couldn’t do that as the competition needs to be started on the 1^st September.”

For others, there are their own rules to play by, such as at RNAS Culdrose, where joint service rules state 51% of the players must be made up of people who are MOD.

“We do have local civilians,” explains Plenty. “Particularly in the youth teams from the local community, that helps massively with community engagement.

“The senior teams are considered the unit sides, but the majority are all service personnel. It brings them together because we’re a bit out on a limb in the west of Cornwall, but being the Royal Navy we have players from all around the country and they are friends and colleagues away from the pitch too.”

At the GT7, the main issue is the turnover of players, but it’s also something their immensely proud of, knowing they serve a purpose to develop young people in the Kendal area for the move into senior football.

Gardner, whose cousin Abby Holmes played in an FA Cup final for Sunderland, is delighted to have seen some of their girls move onto clubs like Manchester United.

“We do lose players,” he admits. “We have a couple at Manchester United and Liverpool, but that’s all positive. The idea is to develop them up. Selfishly, we hope they play for GT7 Ladies, but Iris Thwaites has gone to United and Martha Allington is playing a year up for both United and England at the moment.”

The crucial thing though is sustainability.

While it only costs less than £100 to enter a team into the FA Cup, making it sustainable throughout a whole season is a challenge.

For the three teams in question, they all have things to help them along their way. FXSU gets grants from the university, while GT7 is primarily funded by Gardner and Thompson, while RNAS Culdrose also get support from both the County FA and the Navy FA.

With the increase in prize money in recent years, the reward for just getting past Sunday’s first qualifying round is £1,800, perhaps small change to the teams who will go on and compete at Wembley next summer, but an amount which will be huge to any of the teams progressing this weekend.

“That would look very nice in our union bank account,” chuckles Wallis. “There are quite a few grants we can apply for to help out with paying for pitches, kits etc, they’ve been a big help.”

Gardner adds, “The money goes straight back into the girls and the setup. Training gear, footballs, hiring a pitch. There’s only one 3G pitch [in the area] and it’s a battle to get, the cost is at a premium.

“The main thing I suppose is we’re just very proud to be in it and if we could get a win…it’s a big, historic club in Darlington, that’s a buzz in itself. We trained last night, it was a good, fun atmosphere, that whole FA Cup feeling. Hopefully we could get a win and regardless we’ll enjoy the experience.”

RNAS Culdrose have set their memberships at lower prices, enough as Plenty explains to cover things such as match official fees, in order to get more people signed up, but he too admits the money from a win on Sunday would be “massive”.

“We self-finance. We get regulated to make sure we’re viable, but we have to raise our own funds, so £1,800 would support the women’s team a huge amount of and be hugely important.

“We’ve played in it twice before and both times lost, this time we’re at home and playing against a team in our league we’ve played before, so we hope there’s a chance.”

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No nation has undergone as much of a makeover as Brazil coming into the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Whether partly by design of a new head coach going his own way, partly with no doubt an eye on ensuring a strong base of young players develop over the next three years ahead of a crucial home World Cup, or partly by the fact Arthur Elias saw injuries rule out several key players in the days and weeks before the tournament.

Yes, this Brazil is revolutionary, with 14 players from last summer’s 23 gone, including the likes of Debinha, Ary Borges, Bia Zaneratto, Andressa Alves and Geyse among those not in France right now, and as alluded to some through injury, some simply just through form – or a lack of it.

The CBF made big changes after last year’s disappointing group stage exit, removing the experienced Pia Sundhage as head coach and bringing in Elias, a successful head coach who had won multiple titles with Brazil’s top domestic side Corinthians.

There were further changes behind the scenes, with close ally Cris Gambaré also coming from Corinthians as National Teams Coordinator, and together they have built a new side, including talented youngsters such as Tarciane, Vitoria Yaya, Gabi Porthilo, Jhennifer and more.

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Elias likes to test players by regularly switching things up. Different formations, moving players into different roles, it’s said to be one of the reasons the likes of Bruninha didn’t make the cut for a man who craves versatility.

Between their first two games, Elias made six changes, handing starts to players such as Priscila who was only on the alternates list coming into the tournament, but ended up on the pitch from kick-off against Japan.

Some things of course have stayed the same, such as the timeless Marta, now into her record-breaking sixth Olympic Games, and her last.

“Things have changed a lot, of course,” said the Orlando Pride superstar. “The most important thing was to bring back our style of play in our game.

“Brazil was always a team who loved to play with the ball, be aggressive in both defence and offence. A challenge for the players to play one vs one, I think we have started to play that way again and for us it’s a natural feeling because in Brazil the women’s team has always been like that.

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The NWSL has always been well thought of as one of most competitive domestic leagues in the world, largely thanks to a number of factors.

The USA as a nation has also always been a world leader in the women’s game, therefore developing top domestic talent through its in-depth college system, combined with various nuances such as the trade system and the allocation of North American players split evenly across the teams, has made its domestic league one of the best to follow.

Now in its eleventh full season, the league is both evolving, developing and growing year on year, with the current 2024 campaign seeing 14 franchises competing against each other after the relaunch of Utah Royals and debut of Bay FC.

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Its style has always traditionally mimicked how people view the US game, a transitional style of play based around rapid counter attacks, playing into the strengths of the athletic players the college system has produced for the league over the past decade.

Now though, the league is more international than ever before, despite a limit still in place on how many non-North American players a team can have on its roster.

Between two new teams and that rule expanding from five internationals to seven at the start of 2024, it means an extra 38 international spots were up for grabs this season, taking the total to 98 across the whole league.

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B teams playing in domestic league is something of an alien concept in England, as is the concept of the ‘B team’ altogether, as it happens.

In England, fans are more accustomed to an Under 21 side, or at worst a reserve team, rather than the term B team, but on the continent it’s a whole other story.

While the youth development programme in England is still progressing with the introduction of new Professional Game Academies last year, they do not play in the lower leagues, although reports have now surfaced suggesting PGA sides from the Barclays Women’s Super League and Championship respectively may compete in the FA Women’s National League Plate competition from the 2024/25 season.

The move has been met with mixed reaction, but largely negative, yet overseas the concept of the top teams placing their youth teams into the lower leagues has been commonplace for some time, whether that be in Germany, Spain, France, Sweden or beyond.

The benefits are not hard to understand. Big clubs such as Bayern Munich and Barcelona get to give their young players competitive league games against players in some places twice their age and a proper league programme, but to say it’s met with the same enthusiasm from clubs who are being denied a place by said B teams would be an understatement.

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There are several other issues too, as WFC explored by speaking to several people at top clubs across Europe who have the benefit of a B team in the lower leagues, but it remains an intriguing set up and one which as mentioned is much more common beyond the four shores of the United Kingdom.

“In Germany, we can play a reserve team in the second division, which isn’t possible in the men’s league,” says Francisco De Sá Fardilha, Technical Director of Bayern Munich’s women’s team.

“In the men’s, a Bundesliga team can only have a reserve team as high as the third league. Our reserve team has been in the second division since 2010 and the team’s average age has been around 25 years old. Players who no longer played in the first team could continue their careers in the second team.”

Since the 2018/19 season, a new rule from the DFB ensured now only said teams can field a maximum of three players over the age of 20 in the matchday squad.

“There are clear limitations implemented by the DFG that prohibit the use of regular first team players in the team,” De Sá Fardilha continues. “Our average age is now 17.5. The DFB did this because many clubs requested for second teams no longer to be allowed to play in the second division, so the teams now take part as ‘U20’ squads. The aim is to develop young talent.”

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You’d have been forgiven for thinking we were done with Women’s World Cups until heading to Brazil in 2027, but not quite.

Because on Tuesday the second edition of the CONIFA Women’s World Cup takes place, over the space of less than a week, and with just four teams competing.

It’s no less important to those involved though.

For those who don’t know, CONIFA stands for Confederation of Independent Football Associations, a federation for all associations not affiliated to FIFA.

Currently, it has 40 members, including the likes of North Cyprus, Kurdistan, West Papua, Tibet and more, and has previously included the likes of Crimea, Monaco, Sicily, Chagos Islands, Zanzibar, Western Sahara – and Yorkshire!

CONIFA is over a decade old now and has experienced many challenges over the years, such as the fact it is a non-profit organisation which relies solely on volunteers to get games and tournaments up and running, as well as political conflicts in many of its regions.

That led last month to confirmation its next planned Men’s World Cup in 2025, set to be held in Kurdistan, has been postponed due to unrest in the region right now, and that’s not getting any easier.

Six teams were scheduled to take part in this tournament, but both Kashmir and North Cyprus withdrew late on.

On Tuesday, hosts FA Sampi – a member from day one which represents the Sámi people in the north of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia – will kick off as hosts in the town of Bodø in Norway, along with Tibet, Tamil Eelam (Canada) and Szekely Land (Hungary)

While only three teams have been able to fund the trip to a remote part of the European continent, it’s an improvement on the first women’s tournament two years ago which saw only FA Sámpi join hosts Tibet in Paonta Sahib, India.

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CONIFA’s President, Per-Anders Blind, has been at the head of things since its inception on 7^th June 2013, helping to organise the first World Cup which was also hosted by FA Sápmi – on that occasion in Ostersund, Sweden – in June 2014.

As he speaks about his involvement in helping associations outside of FIFA, stretching back to even pre-CONIFA days, why he’s in charge of something which takes passion and commitment over monetary reward becomes clear.

“I’ve been in football for more or less 50 years,” says Blind. “I played, worked in a club, I was even a football referee. In 2005, there was a guy called Hakan Kuorak, he was the President of the FA Sápmi and he knew I was a decent referee, so he invited me to follow the team to France to participate in a tournament as a referee.

“I said ‘of course’ and that was my first introduction to this non-FIFA world of football!”

Back then, such unofficial tournaments were run by the NF Board [Non-Federation Board], created by three people from Monaco, France and Belgium.

“Remember the Bosman case? Luc Misson, one of the lawyers involved, he was one of the founders of the NF Board,” recalls Blind.

Quickly, the feeling this was more than about football was impressed on Blind, and he soon went from referee to leader of the army in supporting associations with no voice at the FIFA table.

“When I was on the pitch with the players, I felt…wow,” he says. “It was so different to any other game I refereed; it was so much more than football. You could tell it held extreme importance for people to be able to represent their nation and I became so interested and helped voluntarily to help the federation to grow.”

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It’s been a mere eight months since the 2023 Women’s World Cup final, but work is already well under way in terms of preparations for the next edition of the tournament in 2027.

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Swedish company Photon Sports has launched the first major study on women footballers, with the aim of enhancing explosiveness through efficient testing and training.

Partnering with a group of sports scientists at Gothenburg University and the Swedish FA, Photon Sports has launched a four-year study with the aim of finding clues on how to develop new test and training methods adapted for elite women’s players, with the long-term aim of also being able to reduce the risk of serious injuries which are currently dominating the women’s game.

A group of five experts, led by Project Leader Dan Fransson, who is also a PhD Sport Scientist at the University as well as Head of Performance for Allsvenskan side IF Elborg, and made up by Pontus Ekblom, Performance Manager for the Sweden women’s national team and Albin Oldberg, a colleague of Fransson’s at IF Elfsborg, as well as Farzad Yousefian and Bruno Tavares from the University of Beira Interior in Portugal, have set out to research key phases of actions such as quick movement and sprinting.

“I have been in football research for eight or nine years now,” says Fransson. “I did my PhD but mostly I the physical aspects of male elite football. I’ve used GPS data in my role but it’s just numbers, we don’t really measure by it.

“We look at sprinting and acceleration, but we don’t really know what it means, so what we want to do with the next step in this area is identify these explosive movements and their characteristics and context using video to analyse the specific movements.”

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That’s where Photon Sports comes in.

A couple of years ago, the company began work developing technology which measures the body’s position at 60 frames per second.

“It’s used to track physical abilities like sprinting, jumping and change of directions,” says Sven Burman, Marketing Manager for the company.

“Our first customer was the entire Swedish First League and we started building a very large database from thousands of tests and then a bunch of scientists got hold of this and did a pilot study on female explosiveness which came out in May last year.

“When we got results from that they realised there was so much to look into and dig into, so they’ve now created a bigger project across the next four years.”

Specifically, Photon Sports did 8,500 tests across the 2022 Damallsvenskan season, where they still to this day work with all 14 teams in the women’s top division, and work with roughly half of the men’s top division sides in the Allsvenskan.

The initial study revealed a “significant correlation between jump height in countermovement jumps (CMJ) and maximum speed during a 30-metre sprint”, and Fransson expands on what it all means and how both his university and club came to work with Photon Sports.

“I was contacted by Photon Sports, we had a meeting and he told me all about this new equipment and how it measures and I was really interested because before when you are testing those kind of movements, you have a timing gate, but this technology you get 60 measures per second and you can follow the whole spectrum.

“Which parts of this sprint need to be developed for this specific player? They are really keen on not only women’s football but the real world and for people to use their system. Let’s find out what’s going on in top class match play in women’s football and create specific tests off what we find.

“The plan is to do it position-specific, but we can also test the up and coming players against the already established top class international players, that’s the aim.”

On what they’ve discovered from their early studies, Fransson adds “We did an analysis last year with Helena Andersson [University of Umea] and she presented at the World Congress of Science and Football.

“One thing we found different from males to females is the countermovement jump, the ability to jump vertically correlated a lot with the top speed of 30-metre sprints in females, but that’s not what the research shows in males, so it could be the acceleration phase is very different between males and females.

“We don’t have any more information on that right now, but it’s interesting. The physiology has many differences, the hormonal system, but for me we need to investigate more specifics on female footballers.”

Luckily for them, the Swedish FA showed great interest partly due to what Fransson mentioned about the benefits particularly on young players, with many suggestions a key reason behind the current epidemic of ACL injuries in the sport is down to the lack of proper strength and conditioning training the current era of players had growing up given the women’s game has grown exponentially in the last few years.

They’re not again going beyond their own borders either, and Photon Sports has recently started working with Accra Lions in Ghana as well as the Royal Belgian Football Association.

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“Women’s football is evolving,” says Burman. “It’s much faster now, the game pace is higher, the spaces on the field are higher in volume and there’s higher velocity and we’ve seen an increase in things like ACL injuries.

“These scientists wanted to really look at when do these occur during a match, what does it look like, what events make these injuries happen? That’s the first part of the study which was initiated in January.”

The technology hasn’t been created for games, but specifically for training and with knee injuries such a key part of the sport now, the level of the technology could prove to be groundbreaking for women’s football.

“Working with the Swedish FA, the sports scientists have access to their GPS data from the last four major tournaments,” says Burman. “They can synchronise video footage and GPS data to start isolating these events.

“We have a 3D sensor measuring your body’s position so you can isolate these events. You can do a sprint, a change of direction test, we can take all the data from the first phase from real world situations and create new training regimes specifically for women. A lot of it is based on men’s data, but they are very different, so we are developing new tests and new training methods.”

Fransson too is pleased to be able to collaborate with the Swedish FA, admitting only “bits and pieces” of research have been undertaken in the women’s game so far, and the collaboration with the national team and the involvement of Ekblom will prove key in their long-term ambitions.

He’s also more than open to taking the research further afield if it will help the wider women’s game.

“The Swedish FA was a collaborator in this project, it’s important for them the young players we train for the future demands of the game.

“We don’t mind if it goes abroad and if we find anything in particular for women’s football I would be happy to take it abroad, that’s no problem. It all depends on what we find. Our research group, we know in general athlete performance and power in the lower extremities and how to accelerate faster, but we have to bring the whole chain into the football specific movement and events, that’s always our aim and that’s quite unique.”

He adds “We all have the same approach, the starting point for us is the game and how we can train to improve the game and still have these important explosive movements incorporated into a session. We want to look at the elite level players, we have data from the Swedish FA, the four latest tournaments for the women, we have the GPS and video and let’s start with that to analyse the explosive movements.

“The aim is not to end there but find what is happening and how we can train that in football exercises in training to cope with the increased demands of women’s football overall in the future.”

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Even though the key aim of the study isn’t injury prevention, in the women’s game particularly the increased analysis on sprinting and lower body movements could inadvertently prove important information on the likes of ACL injuries, and Fransson admits if they can devise more specific training plans then injuries will “naturally go down” in the future.

“For me, they go parallel, the performance and prevention part,” he says. “If you teach them how to move they become faster but the tolerance to these movements will become better. One person who analysed around 150 ACL injuries in the men’s game on video and what kind of situations most of these injuries occur, he found out 55 were uncontrolled deceleration non-contact movements.

“In my club now, we take this in and maybe it’s not about the gym, it’s controlling the movements on the pitch and if we teach them how to do that maybe we can reduce the risk of injuries. I’m no specialist in injury prevention but my belief is if we teach players how to control their body better, the risk of getting injured will probably go down.”

Fransson says the long-term aim once they have the research and information they need over the next four years will be to create seminars and courses for both teams at the elite level of the game all the way down to academies and grassroots to ensure these processes start when players are young.

“We know from studies at U14 to U16 level there are so many injuries and we need to know more about them and how to train against them and I hope our study can contribute to that.

“The PhD project is four studies, but we have so many spin-off ideas from this. I think we could go on forever. Maybe we can collaborate with other research groups to speed things up and get this research out there.”

He also hopes everyone does more to help the current issues in the women’s game, as well as just the general development of the sport, with resources in many countries now being directed more than ever towards women’s football.

“We do need to do more. UEFA and FIFA have put out grants you can apply for for female research specifically. England and many other countries put in resources like never before now, many teams are investing and I think that is needed.

“In Sweden, the resources of women’s football is very limited. It’s about money, but you can also do a lot with education and facts and bringing it down to the pitch. My feeling is more companies and more organisations want to and are interested in getting involved with women’s football.”

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While all eyes are currently on England’s opening Euro 2025 qualifier with a fellow top five ranked nation in the form of Sweden under the Wembley lights on Friday night, there’s another meeting between the two same nations 24 hours in advance.

The U23 Lionesses face-off against their Swedish counterparts in Telford on Thursday night in Emma Coates’ side’s final game of the new European League, a competition created to offer regular competitive games at U23 level, with the lack of a major tournament for the age band.

Kicking off last September, the competition has run throughout the European season with many camps shadowing those of the senior teams, allowing for example the U23s to train alongside Sarina Wiegman’s first team in Spain last month.

Nine teams have taken part, with Norway, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and Portugal joining England and Sweden, with all sides having faced each other once either home or away.

“Our job is to develop the players as individuals and as a team develop our style of play…”

The Lionesses are unbeaten with three wins and four draws to date, but so are Norway and Netherlands, with the former the favourites four wins and one draw as well as two games in hand on England, and the Norwegians have at times utilised the chance to field overage players to bridge the gap to the first team, such as last month in an eye-catching 4-0 win against Spain.

The competition has come with little fanfare, though there is a working group currently studying how to create more attention around it when next season comes around, such is the level of talent on show across nine major European nations.

It is though not solely about winning games of football, but ensuring there is a clear pathway to Wiegman’s first team, and since the competition started back in September both Grace Clinton and Jess Park have made the permanent step up.

“The two go hand-in-hand, you can’t separate them,” says head coach Coates, who stepped up last summer from her previous role as U19s head coach. “Our job is to develop the players as individuals and as a team develop our style of play.

“We have to learn about how we win football matches because ultimately that’s the pressure they will be under at the next level, so we want to go and win the game on Thursday. Of course, we want to develop our style, and this week is a really exciting one with both teams playing Sweden in the space of 24 hours.”

Others are on the cusp of following in the footsteps of Park and Clinton, such as Chelsea forward Aggie Beever-Jones.

After a successful loan spell at Everton last season, the 20-year-old has scored six league goals for the WSL champions in the current campaign and appears to be the next in line for a senior debut when the opportunity presents itself.

February’s camp in Spain ensured should Wiegman need to call on someone she could do, and that is exactly what happened when Beever-Jones was drafted in for the second game and ended up in the matchday squad.

“Ultimately, we’ve all been preparing for this,” says the forward. “For me, I go back to the NPCs [National Performance Centres] at U14 level and I think the pathway has always been there.

“Seeing two girls like Grace and Jess, and also Khiara [Keating], recently make that step makes it more tangible for us and Sarina’s definitely looking around.

“We say it in our meetings, ‘Who’s next? Who’s willing to put the work in and get that call-up?’ The pathway is definitely there and it’s an exciting time for all of us.”

When the U23s faced Spain in a friendly in Marbella during the February camp, the whole senior squad and staff, including Wiegman, were in the stands watching, with several players able to train up with the first team.

“That camp was so…I guess helpful? On so many levels,” says Coates. “We’ve had a couple of keepers train across today,” she adds, speaking on camp at St. George’s Park ahead of the Sweden match.

“That’s been a great opportunity and part of the benefit of again being on camp at the same time.”

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It’s been a bumpy and at times uncertain road for the U23 age group over the years. In 2018, The FA replaced the group with the U21s, but moved back to the U23s in 2021 to help bridge the gap between the U19s and the first team, and allow players of a slightly older age than 21 to still gain international experience and make the step up to the senior team.

With the season ending on Thursday, some at the upper end of the age band such as Lucy Thomas, Poppy Pattinson, Molly Pike, Ebony Salmon and Jess Naz may see their time in the squad come to an end, but there is also plenty of young talent within the squad to make up a future core.

One of those players in the shape of Tottenham Hotspur forward Naz has felt the benefit of the age group shift, allowing her to continue playing international football, while enjoying a successful season with her club which could yet still end with an FA Cup final.

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“I think it’s something which could be utilised more in the league,” said Grace Clinton as she faced the media on Tuesday afternoon ahead of England’s opening Euro 2025 qualifier against Sweden at Wembley at the end of the week.

Clinton has been one of the stars of the current Barclays Women’s Super League season, shining for Tottenham Hotspur, her performances earning the creative midfielder a Lionesses debut in Spain last month and finding the net just 19 minutes into her senior England career.

The ‘something’ the 21-year-old is referring to is the loan system, of which she is currently a beneficiary of with Spurs on a season-long loan from parent club Manchester United.

Clinton has started 16 games for Robert Vilahaman’s side in the league to date this season, scoring four goals and assisting three more, but she’s one of just six players currently on a loan deal between two WSL clubs.

“I’ve had two loan spells now and I think without them I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am right now football-wise,” said Clinton, who spent the back end of last season in the Championship helping Bristol City earn promotion.

“There’s nothing better than going out and getting those minutes. It’s definitely something which could be utilised more and it’s something that’s helped me so much.”

While Clinton believes more young players could and should head out on loan, there are still others feeling the benefit this season which she will hope to next season when she returns to Manchester United.

“I definitely feel more confident on and off the pitch…”

Another recent senior breakout star has been Jess Park. The Manchester City midfielder, who scored twice in last weekend’s Manchester derby and has come into top form for the blue side of Manchester, has been a key part of their title push this season.

Park is 18 months Clinton’s senior and already wracked up close to 50 league appearances for City, but was struggling to make a permanent breakthrough in a stacked attack before she went on loan last season to Everton, where her skill, close control and intelligence on the ball saw her make an instant impact.

“I think it was really, really important,” said Park. “I’ve said a few times before but when you go on loan it’s such a big decision to make.

“I want to be playing at City, I want to play every minute, but there’s some reasons why sometimes that doesn’t happen and coming back in I’ve felt more confident, more ready. I’ve faced all the same teams playing for Everton so I’ve felt ready to do the same playing for City as well.”

In the 2021/22 campaign pre-loan, Park played 707 minutes of WSL football and this season is already close to that tally with several games remaining.

It’s not a night and day difference, but she’s made more of an impact on the pitch, scoring three goals to the zero she managed two years ago, either side of a loan which saw her play 1,397 minutes with the Toffees, where she scored three times and created four more in a very productive campaign.

One which now she is feeling the benefit of when asked how different she felt coming back into City training last summer after a full season of regular football.

“I definitely feel more confident on and off the pitch. I feel like if I have a point to make I want to make it because everyone’s point is valuable.

“Going away and experiencing being in a team week in, week out, I feel I’ve brought that back and the ability to just be confident.”

There is a distinct Everton feel to many successful loans when looking through the England team right now.

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Esme Morgan and Chloe Kelly have both previously enjoyed loan spells with the Toffees, while goalkeeper Emily Ramsey also had a loan spell before joining the club permanently.

Others have enjoyed similar successes, and it’s easy to forget Manchester City’s now number one goalkeeper was on loan at the bottom end of the Championship last season before she got injured, ironically in a clash with Bristol City’s Clinton.

That link goes further than the first team too, with U23s forward Aggie Beever-Jones joining Park at Everton last season, before returning to Chelsea this in a similar place to Park, helping to make an impact she may not have before, particularly now in the absence of Sam Kerr and Mia Fishel.

Beever-Jones only started seven league games, appearing in 16 overall, scoring three goals across all competitions, but making a big impact as more of a wide forward in the Everton system.

This season, she has six league goals for the WSL champions from just 308 minutes of football and is the next in line on the cusp of a breakthrough, having been called into the senior camp last month when the U23s trained alongside Sarina Wiegman’s team in Spain.

“I think the loan system is such a great thing and I’d encourage it to as many young players as possible,” said Beever-Jones, who is once again on camp with Emma Coates’ U23s for their final European League game against Sweden on Thursday.

“The likes of Jess who I was on loan with last season at Everton, she’s completely hit the ground running at City and I think has something like two goals and two assists just in the last month. It’s so important to get that game time and as a young player you need to make mistakes and you need to be able to express yourself and learn from it, so I think that loan experience is so important.”

There is also a life experience element to it too, as both Beever-Jones and Clinton in particular have learned in having to move away from home.

While the Chelsea forward grew up in London and moved all the way to Merseyside, for Clinton it has been the opposite, swapping home in Liverpool for London, with both also having enjoyed spells in Bristol in between.

“Every person I ever talk to about going on loan, I always talk about how great a step it was,” said Clinton. “Both loans, especially Bristol. As an 18-year-old moving out at a very young age, living away from home and playing games, no one can really prepare you for that except for just doing it.”

Clinton added “Moving away from home makes you grow up. For me, it’s made me mature so much and you mature both on and off the pitch. I loved Bristol, I’ve loved London, going away from home has really helped me.

“I’m an adventurer. I get bored quite easily, I like going out for coffees and I don’t like sitting still, so it’s been really good.”

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U23s head coach Coates, who has recently stepped into the role after coaching the U19s, knows many of the players well and is seeing the benefits of those loans through the likes of Beever-Jones.

In her current squad, only defender Hannah Silcock is on a current loan at Blackburn Rovers in the Championship, but the likes of Ebony Salmon, Tara Bourne, Fran Stenson, Freya Gregory, Ruby Mace and Ruby Grant have enjoyed successful loans in the past.

Speaking about how much she would get involved in helping players with those decisions or offering advice, Coates admitted it’s a “really fine balance” between how much to get involved.

“We can help the players identify the areas on the pitch they need to improve on,” said the head coach. “But there’s a line we can’t cross. We can identity that playing minutes is really important, but it’s not the silver bullet.

“Playing minutes isn’t the only thing which is going to accelerate you as a player, it’s all the other things around it. It’s giving them some things to think about and then it’s down to the players and their agents to make decisions on what they think basically.”

The positive for England, the leagues and the FA is though the evidence of progress is being seen right in front of their very eyes.

“I'm still learning every day no matter where I am…”

It’s also allowing players to go and be around top professionals in a senior environment, as well as returning to their permanent home around arguably even bigger and better players in a better position themselves to compete, whether that be at Chelsea, Manchester City or when stepping into the senior England squad.

"I've been around ultimate professionals and learning from them on the pitch, soaking up all the information and taking everything you can in training and games,” said Beever-Jones. “You're never not learning, you always want to learn to be better and develop yourself.”

Beever-Jones added "For me, I don't even know where my best position is, I play everywhere. I look at it as I'm constantly learning every day regardless of where I'm playing and I just want to be a sponge for whatever situation I'm in, whether it's being involved in the senior camp last time or being back here now.

“I'm still learning every day no matter where I am. Having the likes of Sam [Kerr] and Mayra [Ramirez] at Chelsea, there’s always something new to learn and I hope I can keep doing that.”

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