The Week in Women's Football: Are you ready for this? Mega-bucks Saudi Pro League planned for 2025

This week, we look at Saudi Arabia's Women's Premier League and discuss some plans within the nation to develop a world class women's league in just a few years' time, with every men's top-tier side planning to add a professional women's team by 2025, which Tribalfootball.com have learned from sources familiar with football in the region.

Their plan could mirror the large scale importing of talent on the men's side which has taken place over the past year, and has the potential to increase the value of women's football contracts around the world. The nation only revised their women's national team in 2021 so their efforts at the league level are quite interesting. We review last season and the imports in the league, including an international from Bhutan. As we went to press, we have news of two 2023 WWC Finalists signing with Al-Ittihad for the 2023-24 season.

Also this week, we start our annual review of the UEFA Women's Champions League, with part one looking at groups 1-5 from the Champions path. Next week we will examine groups 6-11 from the Champions path and groups 1-4 from the League path.

Saudi Arabia's Women's Premier League

The Saudi Women's National League was founded in November of 2020 but the name was changed to the Saudi Women's Premier League in September of 2022, when the second tier First Division women's league also began. The Premier League currently has eight teams, which are centered on three cities, with Al Nassr, Al Hilal, Al Yamamah, Al Shabab and Sama hailing from Riyadh, Al-Ittihad and Al Ahli from Jeddah and Eastern Flames from Dammam.

In 2020-21 Al Hilal were champions with Al-Ittihad runners-up. In both 2021-22 and 2022-23, Al Nassr won with Al Hilal second.

In 2022-23, Saudi Arabian nationals