In a week marked by International Women's Day, which brings together not only a celebration of the achievements made by women throughout history, but also a series of challenges that we as a society still have to face - and where sport is no exception - the Thinking Football Summit sought to hear from women in leading positions in sport, to learn about their stories, reflections and challenges.

To Thinking Football Summit, Arianna Criscione, former footballer and founder of Mercury/13, a multi-club management group, shared that she hopes sport will soon be inclusive to the point where "woman" and "female" don't have to be constantly added:

“I have had a lot of experiences as a woman in the industry but the one I would like to highlight is the number of times that I am the only woman at the table or in the room. I am proud that I have been given opportunities in the industry, but I’d like to see more women come up. I’d like there to be a time when this question is irrelevant, and we don’t have to add the woman part. That would be so common for women to be working in sports and to have decision making roles that it's not highlighted because we see it all the time. That would be amazing.”

Arianna emphasises that the evolution of the game has been "incredible" and argues that multi-club management can also play a big role in women's football:

“The evolution of the game is just incredible. We just  just announced our first club, FC Como Women, for the Mercury/13 portfolio and to see where this club is compared to when I played makes me so happy. There is still a lot more I would like to do and things that as an organization we will do for our players but it is already night and day from the experience I had playing in Italy.

Multi-club ownership is at its infancy in the women’s game just like the commercial ability. I believe we are the first group male or female to go into buying our first club knowing we will be buying more and that our objective is to centralize the opportunities and broad economies of scale so that all our clubs can benefit from a range of benefits that individually would be complicated to develop and implement.”

Regarding Mercury13, the former footballer believes that the company is an example of gender equality:

“Even though it’s International Women Day I'd like to take the opportunity to chat about our team at Mercury/13 led by a unique Co-Leadership team, proof that at Mercury/13, we're not just talking about gender equality—we're walking it. We're the only company out there with co-leadership (a female and male CEO) in the football ecosystem from my knowledge. Demonstrating a prime example of what the new wave of female leadership looks like in football, Victoire and myself are new moms but both working and trying to show our daughters what moms can do when they are supported at work.”