Developing women-specific football boots might be the way forward when it comes to reducing the number of ACL injuries suffered by female players.
That is the hope of the European Club Association (ECA), which has backed research into the development of boots made specifically for women.
Several star players have suffered serious knee injuries in recent years, with Beth Mead and fellow Arsenal stars Leah Williamson and Vivianne Miedema among the big names set to miss this year's Women's World Cup due to ACL problems.
Two-time Ballon d'Or winner Alexia Putellas, meanwhile, missed last year's Women's Euros after sustaining an ACL tear in her left leg.
Claire Bloomfield, the head of women's football at the ECA, is hopeful new research can help mitigate the issue.
"High performance is actually the topic of our six strategic goals, where we're really committed to investing in first-of-its-kind research to tackle neglected areas of high performance and medical research," she told Stats Perform at the inaugural ECA Women's Football Summit in London.
"We know that boots on the market today are engineered for white males.
"So we need to work closely with our clubs and our Women's High-Performance Advisory Group to develop a study in partnership with industry experts to allow us to edge closer to this goal of making sure that every woman and girl is playing in football boots that are engineered specifically for her needs.
"Now this is an extraordinary project that took many, many months, and we're still only at phase one. So I anticipate there will be further layers of research and conversations to come.
"But it's great that we're having this conversation with the industry right now. There is a lot of appetite and interest in this topic and I'm hopeful that together as an industry, we will be able to get to a point where in the very near future women's football boots are accessible for all.
"One of the reasons why we launched the group, which is composed of club doctors, physios, sport scientists, all working specifically with the women's team in Europe, was so that we could tackle topics like [ACL injuries].
"So we're looking at things like menstrual cycle and performance. We're looking also at ACL injuries, and we held a session with our high-performance advisory group at Roma earlier this year where we were looking more closely with experts at the biomechanics of ACLs, and even the situations which can impact an ACL.
"There are many contributing factors, and it's a priority topic for us.
"We obviously want to work with the global game to find a way to minimise the number of players who suffer ACL injuries, but also make sure that we are better informed when it comes to things like the rehabilitation and even the training and performance."
Katrine Kryger, a medical researcher for FIFA, added: "A football boot is shaped so that it has a really tight fit to the foot. And it should be because you need to run around and change direction.
"So you can't just wear something that's loose as a normal running shoe, but having something that is not perfectly fitted to the foot will cause discomfort and pain.
"And therefore based on our new data, we have the data to design a football boot that is truly fitted to a woman's foot.
"It will give you data on where the foot should optimally bend, and we provide information about what players like in terms of the most important features of the football boot, what studs they like and where the pain and discomfort that they're currently experiencing is."
Asked whether women not wearing specifically fitted boots could have resulted in a higher number of ACL injuries, Kryger said: "I'm an academic and we base our answers on data, and we don't have the data on that.
"But if you look at it from a sort of a global perspective, we know that there are so many inequalities between men's and women's football that are contributing factors, like playing on poor quality pitches.
"But also things like wearing boots that aren't designed for them are likely to be factors that will impact the risk of injury."
Real Madrid 0-4 Barcelona: Guijarro brace sets visitors up for Clasico glory
Patri Guijarro's first-half brace set Barcelona on their way to a thumping 4-0 win over rivals Real Madrid in Liga F on Saturday.
Claudia Pina and Alexia Putellas were also on target as Barcelona continued their perfect start to the season, extending their lead at the top of the table.
The visitors dominated from the off, as Guijarro broke the deadlock inside the fourth minute, tapping in from Putellas' flick-on from a corner.
Cata Coll was forced into a big save to deny Alba Redondo an equaliser shortly after, but Madrid's hope was soon dented as Guijarro picked out the bottom corner with a superb long-range strike for her second.
Pina strengthened their lead six minutes before the break, clinically slotting past Misa with her low strike.
Putellas added some more gloss to the scoreline with four minutes remaining of normal time, beating the Madrid keeper with a lovely dink to bring up her 199th goal for the club.
Barcelona have won all 10 of their games, and now sit eight points clear of Madrid, who suffered their first league defeat of the campaign.
Data Debrief: Total dominance
Madrid will have felt fairly confident coming into this game after a strong start to their season, but they once again failed to find a way past their Clasico rival.
Los Blancos have lost every single game they have played against Barcelona in all competitions, with this their 15th such meeting.
Barcelona smothered their attack early on, restricting their hosts to just one shot in the first half, while they had 10.
Indonesia 0-4 Japan: Visitors stay unbeaten with rout
Japan continued their unbeaten start to World Cup qualifying with a 4-0 victory over Indonesia on Friday.
Two goals from the visitors in either half were enough to seal the three points and get them back to winning ways after a stalemate with Australia last time out.
Ragnar Oratmangoen should have put Indonesia ahead, but he hesitated one-on-one with the goalkeeper, and Japan did not look back after that. They got a bit of fortune with their first goal, Justin Hubner deflecting a cross into his own net in the 35th minute.
Takumi Minamino got their second just before the break, finishing off a pacy counter-attack by darting onto the end of Kaoru Mitoma’s cross to sweep it past Maarten Paes.
While there was not much the goalkeeper could do with that one, he was at fault for the third as he gifted the ball to Hidemasa Morita, who coolly picked out the bottom corner just after the break.
Yukinari Sugawara came off the bench to round off the scoring in the 69th minute. He raced down the right wing and instead of looking to his options, he rifled it in from a tight angle at the near post.
Japan are up to 13 points after five games, sitting top of Group C, while Indonesia are bottom, still in search of their first win.
Data Debrief: Clinically done
For a team still chasing their first win, Japan are probably not high on the list of opponents they would want to face, and Indonesia were undone by their visitors.
Hajime Moriyasu's side created 0.79 expected goals (xG) to Indonesia's 0.72, while they only had four more shots than their hosts (12 compared to eight).
Japan took their chances, and though the win margin may look harsh, they were deserving of the three points, having dominated throughout the game.
Jamaica 0-1 United States: Pepi give visitors advantage in Nations League quarter-final
Ricardo Pepi's first-half strike gave the United States a 1-0 advantage over Jamaica after the first leg of their Concacaf Nations League quarter-final.
The hosts saw a penalty saved in the first half before their frustrations were compounded late on thanks to Mason Holgate's red card.
The USA had the lead just five minutes in – having smothered a Jamaica attack at one end, the visitors caught them out with a pacy counter-attack, with Pepi sweeping it into the back of the net.
Shortly after, Shamar Nicholson was brought down by Matt Turner when he tried to take it around him, but the goalkeeper made amends, diving low to his right to deny Demarai Gray from 12 yards.
In the second half, Holgate was denied a tap-in by Yunus Musah before Turner scrambled to stop Leon Bailey's corner from nestling into the net as Jamaica searched for an equaliser.
With 86 minutes on the clock, Holgate received a second yellow card in just over 10 minutes for dragging Brandon Vazquez back, meaning he will miss the return leg in Missouri on Monday.
Data Debrief: Hitting the mark
Pepi got the all-important goal on Thursday, and is the fourth player to score 12 goals for the USA before turning 22 years old, joining Landon Donovan, Jozy Altidore and Christian Pulisic.
But it was perhaps Turner who actually had the most vital interventions; he has now saved three of the eight penalties he's faced for the USA, including two against Jamaica.
Mauricio Pochettino also could not have asked for a better result from his first competitive game in charge of the Stars and Stripes as he became just the third full-time manager to win his first competitive away match, joining Bob Bradley (2008) and Steve Sampson (1996).
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