Spanish women football league Liga F will welcome two familiar names in the upcoming season. After advancing from a lower division, Alavés and Valencia are returning to the top flight, taking the spots of relegated teams Alhama and Levante. Before the battle for the first league points kicks off in full force in August, it’s worth taking a moment to recall what these two teams are all about and how they earned their return to the elite.

Swedish rising star Felicia Schröder has put an end to the speculation and is leaving Häcken, the Women’s UEFA Europa Cup champion, to join Real Madrid in the Spanish women’s league. Chelsea and Manchester City were both interested in signing her, but she’s ultimately heading to Liga F. Why is this a good move? 

María Luisa García, known in the world of football as Marisa García, continues making a place for herself in the elite of Spanish women’s football.  The Real Madrid academy graduade started her career in the lower categories of the Madrid club when she was a cadet. Before, she had also played for renowned such as Madrid CFF and San Agustín, also from the city of Madrid.

In the NWSL in 2025, 13 separate players saw their season cut short due to an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. In the ongoing 2026 season, nine players have already torn their ACLs, most recently Brazilian forward Dudinha in a friendly against the USWNT on June 9. It’s no surprise, then, that the league and its players association (NWSLPA) are joining Project ACL, a global research project hoping to reduce ACL injuries in professional women’s football.

On March 28th 2026, the Denver Summit played in the Mile High City for the first time ever in front of a record-breaking 63,004 fans, making it the largest stand-alone women’s soccer game in US history. A little under 13 years earlier, the NWSL’s first ever game brought together 6,784 fans to watch FC Kansas City take on the Portland Thorns. Today, despite being one of the only leagues with independent clubs that cannot build on the success of male counterparts, the NWSL boasts the highest average attendance of any top-division women’s football league in the world. This feat wasn’t achieved overnight, however. How did the league get to this point?

At the end of last year, Forbes published a list of the world’s most valuable women’s sports teams in 2025. Of the 25 teams featured, 13 were football clubs and eight were clubs playing in the NWSL, making it the most-represented football league on the list. What have these NWSL clubs done to earn such high valuations?

Every football playing child grows up with heroes and a club they love above all others. They ask for that team’s shirt every birthday and dream of one day wearing it themselves with their own name on the back. For these players, that dream became reality.

Celia Segura’s name is already history at FC Barcelona. The striker of FC Barcelona B, the second team, arrived at La Masia, as the club’s youth academy is knowns, in style. After her arrival at the team in 2018, she broke the goal record and became Barcelona’s top scorer in youth football after scoring 121 goals in her first season with the team and at just 12 years old.