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As women’s soccer rises in the UAE, multiple generations come together

Areej Alhammadi of the UAE women’s national team helps coach Alliance Football Club Dubai. (Courtesy of Areej Alhammadi)

DUBAI — Salma, a 15-year-old soccer player for the Alliance Girls Football Club Dubai, was early to training. The turf at Sunmarke School, Jumeirah Village Triangle in Dubai felt as if it were 100 degrees, even at 5 p.m. in November. Salma’s boots were laced up, her shin guards strapped on and her hair slicked back. In one natural movement, she rolled the ball onto her right foot and began juggling.

Salma has only been playing organized soccer for a few years, even though she spent her childhood kicking the ball around in her family’s backyard in Dubai and at school during recess. Having grown up in a country that has historically excluded girls and women from sports, Salma currently plays for Alliance Girls Football Club Dubai’s seven-a-side team and the boys’ 11-a-side team.

“The girls would be just sitting around doing nothing [during school recess], and I’d see the boys playing football and I’d join in,” Salma says. “Some of them were nice, but they weren’t going to choose me for the team, so I’d have to wait and just jump in.”

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Salma regularly plays with and against boys' teams in Dubai. (Courtesy of Alliance Girls Football Club Dubai)

In order to succeed at a sport dominated by men in her country, Salma has had to take risks. At 15 years old, she’s already been exposed to the top players in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In Dubai, there aren’t enough prospective women’s players to form a competitive club team for her age group, so she has to play with boys and girls sometimes more than 10 years older than she is to keep improving.

“It’s a bit nerve-racking playing with the boys or older women because you have to live up to an expectation,” Salma says. “When I get the ball, I tell myself, ‘Don’t stress out. Just know what you’re going to do before you get the ball.’”

Even though Dubai is the most populous city in the UAE, known for its tourism, commercial and financial centers and home to the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa, the girls and women’s soccer scene remains small. It took the UAE hosting the FIFA Women’s Club World Cup in Abu Dhabi in 2009, when Barcelona won its first title in club history, for women’s soccer to enter the national conversation in earnest.

During the tournament, it was hard to be in the UAE and miss a game; televisions everywhere aired the matches, people talked about goals and results in the streets, and large groups gathered to watch the best women’s club teams in the world go head-to-head. Shortly after that, the UAE formed a women’s national team, and in 2010 the team competed in its first international competition, the West Asian Championship.

Salma’s fearlessness to compete resembles that of Areej Alhammadi, her role model and favorite player on the UAE women’s national team. Alhammadi joined the team in 2015 after being scouted in a seven-a-side tournament. She also holds the Guinness World Record for completing 86 “hotstepper” football tricks in one minute in August 2020.

“Growing up as a kid in the early ‘90s, there was no such thing as women’s football in the UAE,” Alhammadi says. “To some extent, it was considered somewhat of a taboo for adult Emirati women to participate in it. Nevertheless, I grew up playing with my brothers and cousins until I was too old to play with boys.”

Alhammadi practiced her ball skills alone most of the time because there weren’t any soccer academies or clubs for women. At one point, she tried to form a team at school, but none of the other young women were interested in joining her, a familiar experience for Salma over 10 years later. Eventually, Alhammadi joined a seven-a-side football team that was growing in popularity.

In the United States and other countries, seven-a-side is for players under 9 years old. As they get older, they move up to play nine-a-side and, eventually, the typical 11-a-side. In the UAE, “football 7s” is common among all age groups and, up until now, the only format women’s clubs and academies have used. The goal among the women’s soccer community in the UAE is to create 11-a-side opportunities for future generations.

Girls Football Dubai Director Shauna Duffy came to Dubai a few months ago from the United Kingdom to spearhead that movement. She knew seven-a-side, but only from her early days coaching 16-year-olds. The UAE’s tendency to play a 3-2-1 formation in seven-a-side was just one of several differences Duffy had to get used to after spending the last six years as a coach in Liverpool’s Football Academy.

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Shauna Duffy, who came to Dubai from Liverpool a few months ago, speaks with Salma before training. (Courtesy of Alliance Girls Football Club Dubai)

Duffy was setting up her evening session on the 85-degree day in November when she explained what led her here. Duffy has her UEFA B License and is currently completing her UEFA A License. When soccer stopped altogether in the UK in 2020 because of COVID-19, she jumped at the opportunity to get back out on the pitch, even if it meant moving to a brand-new country.

“It was a two-week window of being offered the job to being out there,” says Duffy, who was hired to run the Girls Football Dubai Academy, Salma’s club and a part of Alliance Football Club Dubai. “In the UK, we weren’t even coaching, so it was a no-brainer.”

Duffy, in her short time with the club, has created a technical program for all of the players, started a ladies team that competes in the top seven-a-side league and helped build out the junior girls teams, senior girls teams and other select groups that distinguish the top-performing players every week for league play.

“Over here, there isn’t a professional league, so on the women’s team you will have 14-, 15-, 16-, 24- and 27-year-olds,” Duffy says. “You wouldn’t get that anywhere else, but over here to field a team and compete in the league, the age doesn’t matter. If you’re good enough, you’ll play.”

The leagues don’t have any regulations stopping 14-year old girls from competing with and against women twice their age.

“We have two girls at the moment that train with the boys as well,” Duffy says, referring to Salma as one of the two. “Because they are at the top end of the girls’ group, we need to keep pushing them and showing them something new. We’ve exposed them to 11-a-side with the boys team. For them, it’s ‘wow,’ because they’ve only ever known seven-a-side, so to even step onto a full size pitch, it’s confusing.”

Salma remembers a tackle she made when she was playing with the boys’ team against the UAE women’s national team. Near the end of the game, she stuck in against an opposing player while playing outside back, and to this day, she can still feel the satisfaction of winning that ball.

“She was the only girl to be selected [in that game],” Duffy says.

The football pathway for young women in the UAE is still developing. Every day, Duffy crafts new playing opportunities for her players and familiarizes them with 11-a-side. She does this by exposing players like Salma to the boys’ training sessions and building strategic practices that evolve into game-like scenarios.

“It’d just be great to see more girls teams,” Salma says.

Fortunately for Salma and Duffy, they are not the only ones pursuing that mission. Last August, French-Portuguese UEFA-certified coach Justine Lafon launched G.O.A.L Academy, Dubai, the first football academy for girls led by an all-women staff.

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Justine Lafon (top right) and her G.O.A.L. Academy Dubai players. (Courtesy of Justine Lafon)

“There is so much that has to be done in women’s football that I decided to step up and open my own football academy for girls with 100 percent female coaches,” Lafon says. “Dubai seemed like the perfect place to do so, as it is a forward-thinking emirate and a land of opportunities where impossible is nothing.”

The UAE Football Association plans to develop women’s football in the country with a strategy called Vision 2038, designed to launch a FIFA-registered women’s 11-a-side league this season.

“Grassroots women’s football is at the heart of the project,” Lafon says. “I feel very fortunate that it happened the very first year I am in the region, and we already registered our team. We are very much looking forward to being part of the league and taking women’s football to the next level.”

Now that the women’s game is taking tangible steps toward growth in the country, Salma can finally start to realize her dreams of playing professional soccer. Alhammadi, who remembers when women’s soccer in the UAE was still a far-fetched prospect, has a more measured view of the situation. She, too, can feel the progress being made, but she hopes it’s just the beginning of the revolution.

“Culturally, we have also come a long way in terms of accepting Emirati women as athletes,” Alhammadi says. “But there’s a lot to be done for women’s football in the UAE to reach the potential it deserves.”

Celia Balf is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports. Follow her on Twitter @CeliaBalf.

Katie Ledecky Nears Own 1,500-Meter Freestyle Record at TYR Pro Swim Series

US swimming star Katie Ledecky reacts to her 1500-meter freestyle time on Wednesday.
Katie Ledecky posted her best 1500-meter freestyle time in seven years this week. (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)

Star US distance swimmer Katie Ledecky is back to her old tricks, registering her fastest 1,500-meter freestyle in seven years — and the event's second-best time in history — at the 2025 TYR Pro Swim Series in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Wednesday.

The nine-time Olympic gold medalist finished the 30 pool lengths in 15:24.51, just missing the world-record 15:20.48 race time she posted in 2018.

Ledecky now holds the 1,500-meter freestyle's top 22 fastest times in women's swimming history — all of which would have won Wednesday's final race, where she defeated second-place finisher Jillian Cox — a University of Texas freshman — by a full 39 seconds.

Even more, Ledecky didn't slow down after her 1,500-meter performance posting her fastest 400-meter freestyle in nine years the very next day.

In the final lap of the race, the 28-year-old staged a comeback to pass Canadian teenage phenom and 2024 Olympic silver medalist Summer McIntosh and secure the win.

Her time of 3:56.81 just missed the US record of 3:56.46 that Ledecky previously claimed along with a gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

"I don't know if I ever thought I was going to be 3:56 again," Ledecky said in her post-race broadcast interview. "I'm just really happy with all the work that I've put in to get to this point."

How to watch Ledecky at the 2025 TYR Pro Swim Series

The 2025 TYR Pro Swim Series continues through Saturday, with Ledecky competing in Friday's 200-meter freestyle final prior to racing in the 800-meter freestyle on Saturday.

Both races will begin at 6 PM ET on their respective days.

Live coverage of the meet will stream on Peacock on Friday before shifting to the USA Swimming Network on Saturday.

English FA Issues Ban on Trans Athletes in Women’s Soccer

The FA "For All" corner flag flies on the pitch before a 2024 international friendly between England and Switzerland.
The Football Association's transgender athlete ban follows a ruling from Britain's highest court. (Richard Sellers/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images)

The English Football Association (FA) announced Thursday that it will ban trans women athletes from playing women's soccer starting with the 2025/26 season, with the governing body's new policy officially going into effect on June 1st.

Previously, the FA allowed trans women athletes to play on women's teams as long as they had "blood testosterone within natal female range."

The move comes after April 16th's landmark ruling from the UK's highest court, which states that gender equality protections only apply to what the court called "biological women" — and that trans women do not legally meet that definition.

The Scottish FA followed suit, also releasing its decision to ban trans women athletes from competitive play on Thursday.

Notably, there are currently no trans women playing anywhere on the UK's professional football pyramid. However, some 72 trans athletes played in FA grassroots matches over the last decade.

Today, an estimated 20 to 30 trans players participate in that growing grassroots system, an initiative created to advance the FA's four "game-changer" priorities — one of which is to "see a game free from discrimination."

“We understand that this will be difficult for people who simply want to play the game they love in the gender by which they identify, and we are contacting the registered transgender women currently playing to explain the changes and how they can continue to stay involved in the game,” the association said in Thursday's statement.

"It is clear these abrupt changes have been made on legal advice following the recent UK Supreme Court ruling, as there remains no football-specific peer-reviewed research or evidence that shows the existing policies constitute a safety risk," stated advocacy group Pride Sports in response. "One consequence of these bans will, inevitably, be a rise in incidents of transphobia in football."

NWSL Teams Shoot for Redemption in Action-Packed Weekend Lineup

San Diego's Hanna Lundkvist, Delphine Cascarino, and Trinity Armstrong celebrate a goal during a 2025 NWSL game.
San Diego is currently fifth in the NWSL standings. (Talia Sprague/ISI Photos/Getty Images)

This weekend's NWSL action features top-table battles, Cinderella hopefuls, and a whole slew of teams hunting redemption wins to open May's league play.

Perched at the top of the NWSL standings, the Kansas City Current sits tied for points with the second-place Orlando Pride, while just four points separate the remaining six teams currently above the postseason cutoff line.

With last week's rollercoaster results setting up redemption arcs for this weekend's slate, the 2025 NWSL season's seventh matchday is full of bounce-back opportunities, a tight race to the top, and a California clash:

  • No. 3 Washington Spirit vs. No. 9 Angel City FC, Friday at 8 PM ET (Prime): Both the Spirit and Angel City are coming off disappointing losses, with once-unbeaten LA slipping out of the Top-8 on a two-match skid. Can either contender regain their early season form?
  • No. 7 Seattle Reign FC vs. No. 1 Kansas City Current, Friday at 10:30 PM ET (Paramount+): The Reign are hanging tough after two weeks of adding points, but they'll face a redemption-hunting Current squad determined to rebound from their first season loss last weekend.
  • No. 6 Portland Thorns vs. No. 2 Orlando Pride, Saturday at 7:30 PM ET (ION): The Thorns have gained points in five of their last six games, and Portland will need all that resilience against a challenging Pride side that's more than capable of mounting their own comebacks.
  • No. 5 San Diego Wave vs. No. 8 Bay FC, Sunday at 8 PM ET (Paramount+): The weekend's marquee matchup pits the Wave — quietly finding their identity under new coach Jonas Eidevall — against Bay FC in a California clash where neither team can afford to lose much ground.

WNBA Stars Head Back to College for Preseason Games

LSU's Hailey Van Lith and Angel Reese high-five during their 2024 Elite Eight NCAA tournament game.
Chicago's Hailey Van Lith and Angel Reese will return to LSU for Friday's WNBA preseason game. (Scott Taetsch/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

It's back-to-school weekend for the WNBA, as teams travel to stars' old collegiate stomping grounds to tip off a series of preseason exhibitions.

While preseason matchups don't carry the same weight as opening day, the league raised the stakes this year to give fans a taste of what's to come during the gap between March Madness and the May 16th 2025 WNBA season tip-off.

Kicking off the preseason party is this year's No. 1 draft pick Paige Bueckers, who will make her professional debut when the Dallas take on Las Vegas on Friday. The showdown will occur at Notre Dame's Purcell Pavilion, as both teams boast Fighting Irish alumni in the Wings' Arike Ogunbowale and the Aces' Jackie Young and Jewell Loyd.

Later on Friday, reunited LSU teammates Angel Reese and Hailey Van Lith will return to the Baton Rouge court when the Chicago Sky tips off against the Brazil Women's National Team.

After facing the Washington Mystics on Saturday, Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever will travel to the 2024 WNBA Rookie of the Year's alma mater Iowa for their own date with Brazil on Sunday.

Fever fans will be particularly grateful that Sunday clash will receive national airtime, as resale tickets for the sold-out game at Carver-Hawkeye Arena are averaging upwards of $440 apiece.

To cap off the weekend, Sunday will also see the new-look Connecticut Sun will battle a Seattle Storm squad hungry to jump back into title contention this season.

Though the exhibition results won't matter, testing players in front of a crowd while building excitement for the upcoming 2025 season can be just as crucial for teams as they look to polish their rosters over the next two weeks.

How to watch this weekend's WNBA preseason games

Friday will see the Dallas Wings take on the Las Vegas Aces at 7 PM ET followed by the Chicago Sky's matchup against Brazil at 9 PM ET, with both games airing live on ION.

Indiana's busy weekend begins with Saturday's 1 PM ET clash with Washington on NBA TV before the Fever face Brazil at 4 PM ET on Sunday, airing live on ESPN.

The weekend's final exhibition pits Connecticut against Seattle at 6 PM ET on Sunday, with live coverage available with the WNBA League Pass.

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