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It was announced last year that a second women's club competition would be introduced in Europe for the 2025-26 season, to sit under the Women's Champions League as the Europa League does on the men's side, and that it would take on a straight knockout format, but no name had been decided by that point. UEFA has now confirmed that it will be called the Women's Europa Cup and that it will have a two-legged knockout format.

Real Madrid qualified for their fourth consecutive Women's Champions League group stage. They did so after qualifying from a preliminary play-off against Sporting CP, whom they beat in both matches. In the second leg, played at the Alfredo Di Stéfano, the Portuguese took an early lead, but a brace from Toletti and a superb goal from Alba Redondo allowed Toril's side to confirm their place among the 16 teams in Friday's draw in Nyon.
Both sides knew what was at stake, which was evident from the first minute. It was a lively start in which Sporting CP took the lead in the 5th minute from a free-kick taken by Andreia Bravo which, after being flicked on by Fatima Pinto, was headed home by Capeta. The visitors' joy was short-lived as Madrid's response was immediate. Feller stole the ball near the penalty area and combined with Weir, who pulled it back for Toletti to fire home with her right foot (1-1, min. 7).
Penalty not given
Shortly afterwards it was Misa who kept out another Portuguese strike with a reflex save to deny Capeta's close-range effort. In the 25th minute, Real Madrid claimed a penalty for a clear foul inside the area by Cláudia Neto on Feller, but the referee waved play on. Our team had the last chance of the first half with a deflected header by M. Méndez from a corner kick by Leupolz.
Right at the start of the second half, Toletti was on target again to complete the comeback and extend the lead. Weir set up the Frenchwoman for the second time, who struck a precise right-footed shot to make it 2-1. Tiredness would then take its toll on the tempo of the game, but the Lisbon side wanted to get back into the contest and it was Misa who kept them out with a couple of fine saves. In stoppage time, Alba Redondo's right-footed shot into the top corner made it 3-1 and sealed Real Madrid’s place in the Women's Champions League group stage.

• UWCL group stage draw made on Friday
• Chelsea get Real Madrid; Man City to face Barca
• Arsenal land in 'group of death'

The draw for this year's group stage was made on Friday and it has thrown up some tantalising fixtures. Reigning European champions Barcelona have been pooled with Man City, as the English side make the group stages for the first time since the competition changed format in 2021, while Chelsea, still chasing a first UWCL title, will take on Real Madrid.

Jill Roord will make a return to Manchester City squad after spending eight months on the sidelines following an anterior cruciate ligament injury.

• Roord suffered an ACL injury in late January
• Has returned to full training post-recovery
• Will be inducted in squad against Brighton

Roord picked up the injury in City’s Conti Cup group stage victory over Manchester United back in January. And after a long road to recovery, she was finally cleared to join her team-mates in training in September.

PSG went into the second leg of this second round qualifier with plenty of work to do, having lost 3-1 in Turin last Wednesday. That task became even harder almost immediately when Sofia Cantore capitalised on the chaos caused by a Juve corner to put her team 1-0 up on the night, and even further ahead on aggregate, with only two minutes on the clock.

It took until after half-time for the Parisians to get one back, when Romee Leuchter converted from the penalty spot after a foul on Marie-Antoinette Katoto, but it did spark them into life a little. Korbin Albert was extremely close to reducing that deficit further when she struck the crossbar and then Jennifer Echegini forced a strong save out of Pauline Peyraud-Magnin.

However, set piece defending - or a lack thereof - proved PSG's undoing once again, Barbara Bonansea coming off the bench to dart completely unmarked to the near post and flick a header beyond Earps that killed the tie off with 18 minutes remaining.

It had looked far from certain after the first leg but Arsenal ensured there will be three Women’s Super League teams in the Champions League group stage for the first time with a comfortable victory over Häcken.

With Chelsea having secured a place as WSL champions and Manchester City 5-0 up on Paris FC from their away leg of their second round tie (an advantage converted into an 8-0 aggregate success on Thursday night), the pressure was on Arsenal to deliver, Jonas Eidevall’s side needing to overturn a 1-0 deficit.

Eidevall had said Arsenal needed to be in the group stage, adding that it would be a failure if they did not qualify. Arsenal do need the group stage if they are to continue their progress on and off the pitch, with the club committed to playing all such games at the Emirates Stadium, but the head coach needed it too. Had his team failed to qualify, it would have been inevitable that his future would have been questioned.

These are the fine margins coaches are forced to operate within. But instead of talk of heads rolling, there were four goals, happy fans and now packed-out Champions League nights under the lights to look forward to. Arsenal go into Friday’s draw at noon.

“It was really important given we’ve built the squad to get into this position, to get into the group stage and compete in the league,” Eidevall said.

“It’s tough to be in the league path [in qualification], it’s a tough start to the season, it’s knockout football, it’s small margins, this was a tough opponent but also tough placement playing Manchester City at the Emirates in between.”

The manager made three changes to the team that earned a point in the 2-2 draw at the Emirates with Manchester City on Sunday, with Lia Wälti, Alessia Russo and Beth Mead returning to the starting XI in place of Frida Maanum, Caitlin Foord and Kyra Cooney-Cross.

Arsenal had been profligate against City and were left ruing missed chances and two dropped points having taken an early lead. There could be no room for the same wastefulness at Meadow Park for the visit of Häcken. The Swedish side had already punished Arsenal for making that mistake against a resilient low block in Gothenburg.

Mak Lind made one change to the side that secured a huge 1-0 home win in the first leg, with Hikaru Kitagawa replacing the forward Alice Bergström.

Eidevall had called the trip to Gothenburg a “step backwards”. At Meadow Park Häcken were keen to turn that step into a slide, attacking early on with the intensity that they had finished the opening leg with.

The visitors were having a lot of joy down Arsenal’s left side, with Katie McCabe’s advanced position leaving space in behind, but it was Arsenal who got the goal that levelled the tie rather than Häcken extending their advantage, with Wälti’s first-time strike from distance in the 23rd minute coming down off the bar and off the back of goalkeeper Jennifer Falk and in.

The goal seemed to relax the shoulders of the players in red, who laboured hard in the relentless rain, and the momentum started to swing their way more definitively.

The goal that put them in front was messy but hard earned. Mead’s effort was blocked, Häcken cleared but only as far as Mariona Caldentey, who arrived from the left and her strike was clipped up and over Falk by the foot of Emma Östlund.

Häcken instantly tested Arsenal after the break after Caldentey gifted the ball to Tabitha Tindell, who cut past Lotte Wubben-Moy but her shot did not trouble Manuela Zinsberger.

The goal that gave Arsenal breathing room came moments later. McCabe’s cross was headed back to her by Emily Fox and the Republic of Ireland captain put it into the middle for Mead, who flicked the ball over a defender and sent a vicious strike in as she spun.

With the tie stretching beyond them, Häcken had to go for it, leaving room for Arsenal to manoeuvre in the final third.

Arsenal’s fourth goal arrived after the changes, as the substitutes Foord and Maanum combined, with the former sending in the cross that the Norwegian turned in. In the end it was a routine victory, but Arsenal need to do better at lifting the pressure off themselves far sooner. “The season starts now here, we can’t relax,” said Eidevall. “We’re in all four competitions we want to be in – now we have to make the most of it.”

Before the 2023 Women’s World Cup final the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, urged women to “push at the doors” of power in their drive for equality. “With men, with Fifa, you will find open doors,” he said. “Just push the doors. I say to all the women – and you know I have four daughters, so I have a few at home – that you have the power to change.

“Pick the right battles. Pick the right fights. You have the power to convince us men what we have to do and what we don’t have to do. You do it. Just do it.”

A month later, in response to Infantino’s heavily criticised comments, the UK-based Women in Football, which has about 10,000 members, launched Open Doors. It calls on Fifa and other football bodies to mandate diverse leadership in national associations and work towards a 30% female membership of general assemblies and executive committees, the inclusion of independent non-executive members on executive committees, presidential term limits and action on sexism and discrimination in the workplace.

After one year of work with several clubs and federations, Women in Football reflected on the work with a discussion at the House of Lords, where its chair, Ebru Koksal, spoke with the Football Association chair, Debbie Hewitt, about the campaign and the importance of diverse boardrooms.

“Nobody wants the wrong kind of people in any boardroom,” the Women in Football CEO, Yvonne Harrison, says. “What we want is diverse boardrooms with great representation and the good boardrooms have got a skills matrix where you look at what you need for what the organisation is doing or where it’s going and you adjust your board accordingly.

“The key thing with Open Doors is for independent people on boards but let’s also make sure that the people on the boards are also really great people doing the right things and have got a common vision.”

Harrison believes Hewitt is the only independently recruited chair of a federation. “That speaks volumes, doesn’t it,” she says. “You’ve got to make sure it’s the right people and that’s what we’re working on with the European Club Association. We’re supporting senior women who are already working in football internationally, in clubs and in federations, with their professional development through a bespoke leadership programme.”

Why does that matter? “It’s about making sure when women do get into these positions or have the opportunity, they can deliver the best version of themselves. Debbie spoke quite a lot around the importance of having people looking out for you and mentoring and guiding you and that’s what we’re trying to do alongside the advocacy and advisory piece.”

Football governance is not known for having diverse representation in its leadership bodies. Harrison says clubs and federations have been the most receptive to Open Doors. “We have a stronger take-up from clubs and federations,” she says.

“There’s a lot of tact required there and it’s challenging within international bodies. There’s a lot of work to do here in the UK so we spend more of our attention here. We’ve had much more of a take-up from clubs and we’ve got some really exciting news coming over the next couple of months that’s come from our work with clubs and other organisations getting involved.”

Can it be frustrating constantly having to make the case for diversity in the boardroom in football when so many other sectors are further ahead in this space, and society even further? “It is frustrating in one sense,” says Harrison. “We shouldn’t need to look to other sectors where change has been made and where quotas or targets have been introduced. Even in sports generally there have been changes.

“With the UK Code for Sports Governance we’ve seen the representation of women on boards of bodies in receipt of public funding shift massively to the point that some of those targets are not in there any more because they don’t need to be. So, we know it works and we know that sometimes you just have to remind people of why it matters.

“There are brilliant examples of organisations doing it super-well and we often allude to them when we’re talking to new corporate Women in Football members, but football is very traditional. It’s moving, there’s a lot of change that’s happening, particularly within the women’s game, and the growth of the women’s game is making football think very differently. We’re excited about what’s to come but we’ll keep banging the drum.”

Fighting back tears, Alex Morgan waved to the crowd and walked off the field for the last time on Sunday as she capped a remarkable career.

The two-time Women’s World Cup winner announced on Thursday she is pregnant with her second child and retiring from the game at the age of 35.

She started and wore the captain’s armband for the San Diego Wave in her final match, playing for the first 13 minutes, a reference to her jersey number for club and country, against the North Carolina Courage before subbing out of the game to an ovation at San Diego’s Snapdragon Stadium.

“I did everything I ever wanted to do and more. With this decision, I feel so at peace because I am ready to start my family and I am ready to hang up the boots and allow the next generation to flourish and just relish in the spotlight,” she said afterward. “It’s a good feeling.”

It was her 63rd appearance for the Wave, commemorated by a No 63 jersey given to Morgan in a pregame ceremony. Overall, it was her 150th career appearance in National Women’s Soccer League play.

Before the match, the video scoreboard showed snippets of Morgan’s retirement video, along with highlights from her career. Her four-year-old daughter, Charlie, accompanied her on the field. She had more than 95 family members and friends at the game.

The Wave’s starters posed for a photo imitating Morgan’s famous ‘tea sipping’ celebration, an homage to her celebration of her go-ahead goal to beat England in the semi-finals of the 2019 World Cup in France.

Morgan’s US national team career was full of accomplishments, including World Cup titles in 2015 and 2019, and an Olympic Gold medal in 2012. In club play, Morgan played for the NWSL champion Portland Thorns in the league’s first year and helped the Wave win the Shield, for the league’s best regular season record, in 2023. Morgan played in 224 matches for the US, with 123 goals (fifth on the career list) and 53 assists (ninth). She was named the US Soccer Player of the Year in 2012 and 2018.

When she subbed off, she fought back tears as she removed her cleats at midfield. During the substitution, a tifo in the supporter’s section read “For Country, Club, Community.”

Despite the nearly 100F heat, a crowd of 26,516 fans filled Snapdragon for Morgan’s farewell match. Among them was San Diego Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove, who went to the game straight from his start against the San Francisco Giants.

“Twelve thousand tickets were sold in one day when she announced that this was going to be her last game” NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman said. “That’s the power of Alex Morgan.”

The North Carolina Courage ultimately won the game, 4-1. Morgan’s penalty was stopped by Courage goalkeeper Casey Murphy.

But the night was all about celebrating a career.