Over the past three seasons the list of elite women’s footballers lost to ACL ruptures has kept growing. Leah Williamson and Beth Mead both tore theirs in Arsenal shirts. Teenage England striker Michelle Agyemang joined the list on international duty in October 2025. Sam Kerr, Alexia Putellas and Vivianne Miedema are among those who have spent long stretches off the pitch with the same injury in recent years.
On Thursday, the FA and WSL Football announced a research project built to understand why. The PhD study will be run by Hanna Lehtovirta at Imperial College London’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, with Simon Ball of the Fortius Clinic attached as the clinical partner. Every club in the Barclays WSL and WSL2 has been invited to take part.
“ACL injuries remain one of the biggest challenges facing female footballers,” Ritan Mehta, the FA’s Head of Women’s Medical, said in the announcement.
Two phases, one question
The research is built around two stages. Players complete surveys covering injury history, training and match load, and hormonal, nutritional and psychological factors, with comparisons drawn between those who have torn an ACL since the 2018/19 season and those who have not. A second phase layers in interviews with players and with medical, performance and coaching staff, capturing how the injury and its prevention are understood from inside the dressing room.
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Risk factors on the researchers’ list run from the anatomical, hormonal, neuromuscular and biomechanical to the environmental, the last of these covering facilities, staffing levels and travel loads at participating clubs.
“By bringing together different types of data and a diverse range of perspectives, we can build a better understanding,” Lehtovirta said.
Numbers behind the alarm
The scale of the problem has been documented elsewhere. Research summarised by FIFPRO puts the ACL injury risk for women at two to six times that of men, and roughly two in three tears happen without any physical contact.
Williamson, Mead and Agyemang sit inside those numbers. Williamson ruptured her ACL against Manchester United in April 2023 and missed that summer’s Women’s World Cup. Mead tore hers in the same fixture on 19 November 2022 and also missed the tournament. Agyemang went down on 28 October 2025 during England’s 3-0 win over Australia and faces a nine-to-12-month recovery.
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Running alongside Project ACL
The Imperial project lands next to Project ACL, a three-year investigation led by FIFPRO with the PFA, Nike and Leeds Beckett University that has been piloting in the WSL. All 12 WSL clubs completed first-year questionnaires, and the project is now examining environmental and working condition factors in professional women’s football.
Lehtovirta’s data collection with the English clubs is set to begin this season, with the Imperial study running across three years and findings fed back to the FA, WSL Football and participating clubs as the work progresses.
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