Riyadh: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is set to launch a women’s football league in the upcoming months. The league was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, local media reported on Friday.
This information was revealed by the head of the federation Yasser Al-Meshal, during a conference to launch the new approach—’strategy for transforming Saudi football’.
“We have many ambitious goals in the upcoming years to promote women’s soccer through the launch of the first edition of the league for teams, whose players will form the first women’s national team,” Arab News quoted Yasser Al-Meshal.
The Kingdom will work to increase the number of competitions in all regions to 50 competitions by 2025 and aims to reach more than a thousand Saudi women players in the coming years, said Al Meshal.
The step is to promote female participation in sports. The league will play its matches in the capital Riyadh and two other cities.
Saudi women were allowed to enter football stadiums for the first time in January 2018 – the same year that the Gulf kingdom ended a decade-long ban on female drivers.
The country in recent years adopted several reforms to empower women, including ensuring that women can drive cars, enter playgroups and stadiums, and pursue occupations that were previously accessible only to men.