United Kingdom

Manchester United is set to play in a new women’s seven-on-seven tournament next month, despite growing injuries in the league and player concerns over a congested game schedule. 

The eight-team, 16-game tournament is a new global addition to the women’s game, promoting faster matches predicted to increase viewership and financial gain for female footballers. The pitch is half the size of a standard soccer field, and matches will only be 30 minutes — one-third of the typical 90-minute length game. 

“If you look at the short term before these Euros now, we have a very good contact with clubs and they would get some meaningful minutes to get prepared for the Euros,” England manager Sarina Wiegman told The Telegraph. “But in the longer term, I don’t see how we can fit that in the schedule in the calendar.”

The tournament will take place at the Estadio Antonio Coimbra da Mota in Estoril, outside of Lisbon, from May 21-23, just one day prior to the Women’s Champions League final in Lisbon on May 24. The company, W7F, is led by former Chelsea Women chairman Adrian Jacob and former USWNT midfielder Aly Wagner. 

Former Arsenal player Tobin Heath is part of a player advisory council that prioritizes the players’ best interest throughout the series. The Telegraph noted that there is a commitment to invest “as much as $100 million in W7F over the next five years,” greatly increasing the women’s game’s commercial investment. 

France

Over 50,000 runners raced from the Champs-Élysées to Avenue Foch in the Paris Marathon on Sunday, April 13. The event — which raised around $5 million across nearly 300 charities — set a record for the most participants in a marathon, with over half being first-time marathoners.

Bedatu Hirpa, a 25-year-old runner from Ethiopia, took gold after a nail-bitingly close women’s race at the marathon. Kenyan runner Benard Biwott took first on the men’s side, with a bit more room to spare at the finish line. 

“I tried to push until the end,” Biwott said after the race. “I’m very pleased with my time today — it was very difficult, but I gave it my all to win today,”

Hirpa outran 28-year-old Ethiopian runner Dera Dida in the final meters of the 26.2-mile race, winning by a close margin of four seconds to make it to the finish line at 2:20.45. Hirpa recently won gold at the Dubai Marathon in January, just barely beating Dida again in the same fashion. 

The race was also 22-year-old Biwott’s second marathon, who achieved a personal best of 2:05:25 after his first outing — and win — at the Frankfurt Marathon last fall. 

Spain

The Spanish soccer federation is asking FIFA for permission to install a new video review system for the women’s game next season. A consistent video review system is only fully operational in the men’s game due to the technology not being adequately nor regularly invested in yet. 

The system, in addition to supporting referee decisions, would allow coaches to challenge in-game calls — something that’s already implemented on the men’s side. It’s a similar system to what is often used in the United States across collegiate and professional sports leagues. 

The request followed Real Madrid’s victory over Barcelona, in which a Barcelona goal was wrongly refused as offside in the rivalry match last month. Madrid ended up taking the match, marking its first-ever club win over Barcelona’s women’s team. 

The federation aims to implement Football Video Support instead of regular Video Assistant Referee technology as it is more cost-effective and designed to travel better with teams. VAR, which is commonplace for all of the men’s games, requires far greater resources and persistent monitoring. FIFA said that FVS is aimed as an alternative to VAR, as well as a step closer to regular VAR use in the women’s game, as “human and financial resources are limited and very few cameras are in use in their competitions.”