7 things we learned from the Women’s World Sevens Football


May 23, 2025, 05:00 AM ET

The women’s football calendar had a new arrival this year: the World Sevens Football (W7F) tournament. Held a few days before Arsenal take on Barcelona in the UEFA Women’s Champions League final, the W7F made headlines for its $5 million total prize money, where the winners get $2.5m — which is more than the $1.6m that the UWCL winners will receive.

From May 21 to May 23, the Estádio António Coimbra da Mota in Estoril, Portugal played host to W7F games with eight teams — Ajax, Bayern Munich, Benfica, Manchester City, Manchester United, Paris Saint-Germain, Roma and Rosengard — battling it out.

With seven players each side, on a smaller pitch, the games were 30 minutes long (two halves of 15 minutes each), and had rolling substitutions and no offside rule, making for end-to-end action. So what did we learn from it?

1. The top players showed up …

Unlike other tournaments like The Soccer Tournament (TST) and Baller League, there were a number of first-team players on show.

Teams had squads of up to 25 players, with 14 permitted to be used during a game, and unlimited substitutions to give them a rest.

So that meant fans got to see the likes of Jess Park and Kerolin (Man City); Lily Yohannes (Ajax); Celin Bizet, Ella Toone, Grace Clinton (Man United); and Pernille Harder (Bayern Munich).

2. … and enjoyed themselves

It was clear that “vibes” were the order of the day, as plenty of teams and players looked to be enjoying themselves …

And especially Manchester United.

3. There was music and individual intros

The players were all given a chance to walk (or do whatever) out onto the pitch with their own introductions, like in the NBA. And some teams made good use of it.

4. Plus goals, goals and more goals

In the first day of action, 47 goals were scored across the 12 matches and it was end-to-end stuff, without much thought for defending.

Man City’s Aoba Fujino had the honor of bagging the first-ever goal.

And there were some crackers after that too.

5 … And goal celebrations

Bayern Munich’s Tuva Hansen brought back images of Chloe Kelly from Euro 2022 when she celebrated by ripping off her shirt and getting a yellow card for her troubles.

Bayern also brought out “the worm” as a celeb.

And Man United’s Melvine Malard enjoyed a dance.

6. Rolling subs are fun

Mainly, the idea of rolling subs was there to protect players from overdoing it after a tough season and with Euro 2025 on the horizon.

But in Bayern vs. Ajax, it was also used a tactic as Bayern swapped all six of their outfield players before a corner, causing confusion in the defence, and scored as a result!

7. Even the officials had fun

The officials even seemed to enjoy the atmosphere …

Though while things picked up as the day wore on, the 5,000-capacity stadium could hardly be called full and the numbers of fans were more in the hundreds than the thousands. Something to work on for next year.





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