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France defender is club’s sixth signing of the summerCoach Ho says she is aggressive and good on the ballTottenham have signed the France defender Alice Sombath from Lyonnes for a club record fee. The price paid for the 22-year-old has not been disclosed but the previous club record, paid for Signe Gaupset in January, was reportedly more than £375,000.“The league is very competitive, every game is a tough game and that’s what I’m most excited about,” said Sombath. “I saw that Spurs had a very good season last year. My qualities can bring something to the team, even though I know they already have a lot.”Sombath spent six years at the eight-time European champions Lyonnes, signing her first professional contract with the club after she was signed from Paris Saint-Gemain in 2020.She won the Champions League in her second season, featuring twice and being on the bench in the final, and won five league titles and two Coupe de France titles.Tottenham’s head coach, Martin Ho, said the defender “fits the profile of what we’re building”. “She has already shown real maturity in her performances, and we believe she has all the qualities to continue developing into a top player within our environment,” he said.“Alice is an aggressive defender who is comfortable in possession, competitive in her duels, and has the ambition to keep improving every day. Those characteristics are really important to us, and we’re excited to help her take the next step in her career while strengthening the squad.”Sombath is Spurs’s sixth signing of the summer, after Shekiera Martinez, Kirsty Hanson, Victoria Pelova, Caitlin Dijkstra and Selma Panengstuen.It is understood the club are delighted to have got these deals done early, allowing for a full pre-season, and that Sombath’s recruitment means they have secured the services of their six priority targets.Tottenham finished an impressive fifth in the WSL last season after a disappointing 11th place the preceding season. They were four points behind fourth-placed Manchester United but 19 behind the league winners, Manchester City.

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The Queens Classic – Kerr’s return, Lavelle’s stunner, wildfire smoke and all in between – shows how far the league has come and also where it can still improveTen years ago, a National Women’s Soccer League game at a baseball stadium was a sign of just how far the league had to go. A match during the 2016 season was played at a minor-league ballpark on a woefully small pitch, dubbed “shocking and embarrassing” by the league’s own stars.Come 2026, NWSL games at ballparks are showpiece events. Attendance records were shattered at Chicago’s Wrigley Field and San Francisco’s Oracle Park in the previous two seasons. Wednesday night added another milestone: Gotham FC’s 1-0 win over the Washington Spirit on a hot, hazy night at Citi Field, the regular home of Major League Baseball’s New York Mets, drew the second-largest crowd in league history (42,175) and set the record for the most attended women’s sporting event in the city’s history.After a month-long pause during the men’s World Cup, the NWSL resumed play on 3 July. If any match seemed fit to be a table-setter for the rest of the season, it probably was this one. San Diego still lead the league, but Wednesday’s result pushed Gotham even on points with the Spirit and the Portland Thorns. (The Spirit sit second, via the goal-differential tiebreaker.) The East Coast rivals met in last year’s final and over the past three seasons have combined for two championships (Gotham), two second-place finishes (Spirit) and three trophies in other competitions.At the same time, the match dubbed the Queens Classic was also a microcosm, full of the things that have come to define the NWSL at this point in its 14-season history: stakes, star power, sky-high ambition and still some controversy.Rose Lavelle, the standout Gotham midfielder whose goal decided last year’s final, delivered a brilliant curler in the 37th minute for the night’s lone goal. The crowd favored the home team, but the stands were scattered with the No 2 jersey of star Spirit forward Trinity Rodman, who was captivating as usual but was unable to convert any of her five shots. The loudest cheer of the night came in the 63rd minute, when Australian striker Sam Kerr earned her first minutes since signing for Gotham after six-and-a-half years at Chelsea. It was a sort of homecoming: she starred in the era when the club was known as Sky Blue, scoring the goals that would help make her the NWSL’s all-time leading scorer while navigating off-field turmoil and playing in front of crowds that barely cracked 3,000.“I feel so spoiled to play at this club, because we keep bringing in incredible players,” said Lavelle, referencing a transfer list that includes Kerr, Irish captain Denise O’Sullivan and Norwegian midfielder Guro Reiten in the past month alone. “I went up to her during a corner and said, ‘Welcome back, but chill,’” Rodman joked about Kerr’s return.When Kerr left Sky Blue in 2018, the headlines weren’t about the team’s attendance records or mega-transfers, but for their mediocre play, training grounds without running water and minimal resources. That version of the club seems light-years away from what exists now, for more than just the improved finishes, fresh colors and new leadership. Last week, Gotham announced they will relocate to New York beginning in 2028, just around the corner at the future Etihad Park. The buildup to this game involved subway advertising, promotions and even a $15 ticket offer organized by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and 70% of ticket-buyers were “new fans”.“It was really special just to see how many people were there that that was their first Gotham game,” midfielder Jaedyn Shaw said.It seemed fitting that the night’s opponent was Washington, another team who have built from the bottom and embraced ambition in a league whose structure doesn’t always encourage it.“In many ways, this is like a full-circle moment,” commissioner Jessica Berman told reporters at half-time. “We know that with investment, if you build it they will come, and this is a proof point for that.”This moment of rapid growth for the NWSL – the past 12 months have seen new attendance, TV viewership and expansion-fee records set – does not come without growing pains.Nearly 10 years to the day of the tiny-field fiasco, both teams seemed to agree that, while the pitch at Citi Field wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t the prettiest either. (“That’s showbiz, baby,” Lavelle said.) The match aired in primetime on ESPN, but the lone goal happened to occur while the screen was split for an interview, with the broadcaster and sideline reporter nearly tripping over each other in their commentary.The weather conditions Wednesday were far from ideal for playing soccer, and far from ideal for even being outside. A heatwave kept the temperatures in the 80s and 90s fahrenheit and pushed the heat index above 100. Much of New York spent the day under an air quality alert, with smoke from Canadian wildfires drifting south. The ballpark was cast in an orange-brown haze as the sun set before kick-off, and the smell of smoke lingered throughout the night.While the league has postponed games for poor air quality, it has also received criticism for going ahead with high-profile games even in adverse conditions for players and fans. The most significant incident came last year, when a marquee game between the Orlando Pride and Kansas City Current on national TV was played despite extreme heat that sent more than a dozen spectators to the hospital.In this case, the conditions did not reach the threshold for delay or postponement. Instead, with the air quality index above 150 – classified as “unhealthy” by the Environmental Protection Agency, but below the 180-200 mark for potential delay and the 200+ mark for postponement – the league instituted two hydration breaks per half. Spirit coach Adrián González was upfront with his disdain for the pauses, saying the lack of rhythm killed the game while acknowledging the necessity on the day.“I think on both sides, we were just like, ‘Damn, another break, another break, another break,’” Rodman said. “If we have to have a hydration break every 15 minutes, then we shouldn’t be playing the game, and that’s my opinion. … But at the end of the day, there’s 40,000 people, it’s a whole event. So it is really tough. I think it was a really hard situation for everybody to work around.”Wednesday night will ultimately go down as a success. Such scenes once seemed unfathomable; the Citi Field crowd more than doubled the total attendance across the 12 home matches in the home club’s debut season in 2013. But acknowledging two truths – that the league has come far, and still has a long way to go – is part of understanding this latest chapter.“It’s pretty cool when you’re out there and you realize that this is your job,” veteran Spirit midfielder Andi Sullivan said, “and that this is what your dreams looked like, or maybe what they haven’t looked like along the way.”

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Many are in awe of the investment that Michele Kang is making into the women’s game. Others, though, are baffledThere is one team whose transfer activity this summer has captured everyone’s attention. London City Lionesses, a club who finished in the bottom half of the second tier a little over two years ago, have stunned the women’s game by signing a flurry of big names, including the Spain stars Alexia Putellas and Mapi León, the former England goalkeeper Mary Earps, and then, on Wednesday morning, the France winger Kadidiatou Diani. It is a startling recruitment drive intent on breaking up the Women’s Super League’s established order.Reaction has been divided. Many are in awe of the investment that the independent club’s owner, the American businesswoman Michele Kang, is making into the women’s game. Others, including senior staff at lots of rival clubs, are baffled at the idea that one of the league’s smaller teams can afford such world-class signings. They have one key question on their lips: how are London City able to sign all of these top players within the confines of the WSL’s salary cap rules?The scepticism is understandable on the basis that the Kent-based club’s most recent set of financial accounts – covering the 2024-25 season, when they won promotion to the top division – showed their total revenue for that campaign was £902,000. They recorded an operating loss of £10.6m, well over 10 times their revenue. There were no strict financial rules in place that term. Now there are.The league’s new financial regulations are clear: a WSL club’s wage bill must not exceed 80% of their revenue plus up to £4m or a further 25% of the club’s revenue (whichever is higher). The potential sanctions for breaching that cap are also explicitly outlined within the league’s regulations: a top-flight team could have one point deducted for every £100,000 of overspending, with a deduction of 10 points or more for an overspend of more than £900,000.However, the league’s rules also state: “The sanctions set out in these regulations for any salary cost threshold breach shall not be enforced against a club during the 2025-26 relevant period,” which is consistent with what sources at more than half a dozen WSL clubs have told the Guardian. Last season was in effect treated as a transition year, or a “dry run” of the new regulations, and therefore no clubs will be punished for overspending in 2025-26. But from 2026-27 onwards the sanctions will become enforceable, and there is widespread expectation among clubs – who are, after all, the main WSL Football shareholders – that every club will have to work within the salary cap for the upcoming campaign. That means Kang’s ambitious club – who have also signed Janni Thomsen from Utah Royals this summer and Eintracht Frankfurt’s Nicole Anyomi – have now got to get a shift on to grow their revenues, or face a likely points deduction.With London City having made a series of international-level signings in the summer of 2025, including France’s Grace Geyoro, Spain’s Lucía Corrales and Australia’s Alanna Kennedy, it is widely anticipated across the division that they will not have been able to meet the “80% of revenue plus £4m” wage cap in 2025-26 (they are unlikely to have been alone in that regard as plenty of WSL clubs grapple with lower revenues). Kang’s belief in the ability of women’s footballers to drive commercial success is unwavering. If she is wrong, then after 2026-27 her chickens may well come home to roost. But if she is right, the owners of other women’s clubs around the world will be wishing they had invested more upfront. Either way, there will be a lot of interested parties waiting to see how much London City’s revenues rise and where any such sponsorship comes from.The club are understood to be confident they are fully compliant and transparent with the league. London City, who finished sixth in the WSL last season, also believe they have triggered commercial growth across the league with the addition of the two-time Ballon d’Or winner Putellas, as well as bringing home a household name in Earps.London City’s financial accounts for the year ending June 2027 will not be published on Companies House until the spring of 2028, but it is understood that all clubs have to submit their relevant documentation each season by the September immediately after the end of the season in question, so in this case, September 2027.For the league, there is a fine balance to be struck between the evident need to attract investors and not deter a wealthy owner such as Kang while also maintaining sporting integrity and making it clear that rules are rules. There are many in the sport who also have sympathy for Kang in that she does not have the luxury of being able to lean on the revenues of an affiliated men’s club and blur the lines between the men’s teams’ and women’s teams’ shared revenues in their accounts.Yet there is also the fundamental question of whether or not this project is sustainable. And regardless of whether or not London City can be successful in growing their revenues this season, is the ever-increasing gap between the WSL’s haves and have-nots healthy for the game? The juxtaposition between London City’s spending spree and this summer’s budget cuts at clubs including Southampton, Plymouth and lower-league sides such as Forest Green Rovers, who have dropped their women’s team altogether, could hardly be more jarring.If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email moving.goalposts@theguardian.com.This is an extract from our free email about women’s football, Moving the Goalposts. To get the full edition, visit this page and follow the instructions. Moving the Goalposts will be sent out once a week, on Wednesdays, in the close season but will be back on Tuesdays and Thursdays from September.

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Fee for forward could be as high as £850,000The 26-year-old has one year remaining on contractChelsea are closing in on a deal to sign the France forward Melvine Malard from Manchester United for a fee that would be a club-record sale.It is understood the transfer fee could be as high as approximately £850,000, although some sources have suggested the deal will be closer to £750,000. The discussions are understood to be at the final stage and the move is expected to go through.United attempted to agree a new contract with Malard, who has one year remaining on her existing deal, but it became clear that the forward’s desire was to seek a new challenge. United then did not wish to lose a high-value player on a free transfer next summer.Sources have indicated that United will reinvest the transfer fee into the team and Marc Skinner’s side will likely be busy in the transfer market, which is open until 3 September.Malard is understood to have been a key target for Chelsea and they have tracked the former Lyon player for an extended period. The 26-year-old has previously played under the Chelsea manager, Sonia Bompastor, at Lyon and is understood to be looking forward to reuniting with the Frenchwoman. The two have a friendship that has lasted for more than a decade, since the coach encouraged her to swap the island of Réunion for Lyon as a youngster.For Chelsea the move for Malard will strengthen their attacking options in a summer when they have also agreed a new contract for the England forward Aggie Beever-Jones.Malard scored four Champions League goals last term to help United reach a maiden European quarter-final, as well as six times in the WSL in 18 starts. She was also part of the France squad that reached the knockout stages of Euro 2025 last summer.Elsewhere, Arsenal have signed the 19-year-old Germany youth international forward Lisa Baum from the Bundesliga side RB Leipzig. Born in Tanzania, Baum moved to Germany aged four and has been a regular in their age-group sides.“This league is so competitive and Arsenal is a big club, so I’m excited to challenge myself and compete with the best,” Baum told Arsenal’s club website. “I want to win trophies and develop my game, and Arsenal feels like the perfect match to achieve that.”Everton have completed the signing of the France under-23 forward Noémie Mouchon on a free transfer from the recently relegated Leicester City. The 23-year-old told Everton’s website: “I am a fast player and I love to score goals, so I can’t wait. I just want to score a lot with Everton. That’s my only objective.”Everton’s technical director, Nick Cox, added: “We are really pleased to strengthen our attacking options with the signing of Noémie. Unsurprisingly for a player of her talent, she was wanted by other clubs but was keen to sign for Everton and help us to progress.”