News

The news pages are dominated by the FA’s announcement that from 2018-19 the top flight will hold up to fourteen fully professional clubs, with a new semi-professional national league beneath it – the restructuring the editor’s letter has just described as something her head gets and her heart hates. Around it, the ground shifts elsewhere too: Norway’s federation equalises pay between its senior men’s and women’s teams, Australia guarantees W-League retainers to players many of whom had been counted as amateurs, and Esther Staubli becomes the first woman to officiate at a male FIFA tournament. Euro success lifts the Netherlands to a best-ever seventh in the rankings and England to third. Kelly Smith and Rachel Yankey enter the National Football Museum’s Hall of Fame.