There are rolling substitutes, you cannot be offside and smoke cannons erupt from behind the goal when you score. Women’s football’s newest competition, with its $5m (£3.7m) prize pool, is highly lucrative for the teams involved but is not taking itself too seriously. Perhaps that will become its greatest selling point, as this end-of-season party on the Portuguese Riviera seeks to show that women’s football can thrive if it is different.
There has been no patient buildup and nobody is sitting deep in a low block; it is just attack after attack. In simple terms, the first day at World Sevens Football felt like a throwback to what sport is supposed to be about: fun.
