WSL Squad Rules: Size Limit, Homegrown Quota and Loans
How the WSL squad rules work in England: the 25-player list, eight homegrown places, loan limits, academy registrations and the five-from-nine bench.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Women's Football26 min read
- Squad list maximum
- 25 players
- Homegrown minimum in the WSL
- 8
- Substitutes named
- 9
- Youngest age to register
- 16
Rule 5.9.3 of the WSL Football competition rules runs to a single sentence, and it is the one most supporters are looking for. A Women's Super League club's squad list may hold a maximum of twenty-five players at any one time during a season. Inside that twenty-five the Football Association requires at least eight homegrown players. Beneath it the rules set a floor of eighteen players on professional contracts, and alongside it a limit of six loans in a season and a bench of nine from which five may be used.
So the short answer for England's top division is this. Twenty-five on the list, eight of them homegrown, nobody registered before her sixteenth birthday. Academy players registered through the club's Professional Game Academy sit outside the list and can play any number of matches. The squad and loan rules are written by WSL Football, the club-owned company that has run the top two divisions since 2024; the homegrown quota and the work-permit test belong to the FA. What follows uses the 2026-27 editions of both rulebooks. They are revised most summers, so on a disputed point the current edition is the one that counts.
The WSL squad list: twenty-five names and the players outside it
The squad list is a document, not a figure of speech. Each club submits it to the competition secretary through the online registration system no later than twenty-four hours before its first match of the season, and a player who is registered with the club but missing from the list is not eligible to play. Being registered and being listed are two separate conditions and both have to be met.
Who goes on it is simple enough. Every player holding a playing contract, every non-contract player, and every player the club has borrowed. A loan moves the name across: for as long as it lasts she is on the borrowing club's list and off the lending club's.
Who stays off it is where the real size of a WSL squad is decided. The rules name three categories that do not count. A PGA player is a girl or young woman registered with the club's Professional Game Academy, the age range running from fourteen to twenty. An academy contract player is one of those who has been given a paid academy deal. A reserve player is a non-contract player in a development team, a status open only to clubs that do not yet run an academy of their own. Once the right form has been approved, any of them can take part in any number of first-team matches without being included in the squad list.
| Player status | Counts towards the 25 | What the rules add |
|---|---|---|
| Contract player | Yes | A club must have at least 18 from the close of the summer window |
| Non-contract player | Yes | May not hold a registration with any other club |
| Player borrowed on a standard loan | Yes, at the borrowing club | Removed from the lending club's list for the loan |
| PGA player | No | Academy registration, usable from her 16th birthday |
| Academy contract player | No | Unlimited first-team appearances once registered |
| Reserve player | No | Only at clubs without a Professional Game Academy |
| Player removed for long-term injury or maternity | No, with the league's approval | Registration is kept and she is re-added on return |
The floor matters more than the ceiling
Two minimums sit underneath the cap. A club needs eleven registered players at least fourteen days before its opening fixture. More to the point, it needs eighteen contract players registered by the date the first transfer window closes and at all times after that. A top-flight club cannot run a first team of twelve professionals padded out with teenagers, which is what the eighteen is there to prevent.
The ceiling, by contrast, bends. During the second transfer window a club may take up to three players off its list for any reason at all and keep their registrations until the following season. Separately it may apply to remove a player who has a long-term injury confirmed in writing by a doctor, who is pregnant, or who is on maternity, adoption or family leave. She stops counting, the club can register somebody in her place, and when she is ready to return the league can approve a list that runs past twenty-five for the remainder of that season so that nobody has to be pushed out to make room.
That last provision is the one worth knowing about. A squad cap that punished a club for a player's pregnancy would be a rule the women's game could not defend, and the regulations were written so that it does not.
Eight homegrown players and a definition that ignores passports
Rule 5.14 of the competition rules says only that clubs must comply with the FA's Home Grown Player Rule. The substance is in the FA Handbook, in the Women's Football Pyramid Regulations, and it is short. From its first competitive match of the season to its last, a club in the top tier must have a minimum of eight registered homegrown players on its squad list.
The definition takes one long sentence. A homegrown player is one who, irrespective of nationality or age, has been registered with a club affiliated to the FA, or to one of the associations affiliated to it, for a period of three seasons or thirty-six months before her twenty-first birthday, or before the end of the season in which she turns twenty-one. The period may be continuous or broken. For this purpose a season starts on the day the summer transfer window closes and ends on the day of the last league match.
Three things follow, and none of them is obvious from the word homegrown.
It has nothing to do with England eligibility. A player raised in Lancashire who has chosen to play for Jamaica, the Republic of Ireland or Wales is homegrown. So is a Dutch or Australian teenager who joined an English academy at seventeen and stayed three seasons, and she keeps the status for the rest of her career.
It has nothing to do with the club she now plays for. The registration can have been with any affiliated club, and the rule does not ask that it was a professional one. Seasons spent at a county-affiliated girls' club count towards the three, which means almost every player who grew up playing organised football in England passed the test before she left school.
And it cannot be acquired late. A player who arrives from abroad at twenty cannot bank three seasons in time, however long she stays afterwards.
The practical effect is narrower than the label suggests. This is a rule about where a footballer was registered as a child and a teenager, and what it restricts is the number of players a club can import as finished adults. The equivalent in the men's top flight uses the same three-seasons-before-twenty-one test and is set out in our guide to the Premier League's homegrown player rule.
A club short of homegrown players: seventeen open places and no more
Twenty-five less eight is seventeen, and that subtraction is the whole of the rule's bite. A WSL club may fill at most seventeen places on its list with players who do not meet the definition. The eighteenth such signing cannot be accommodated, whatever she costs and whoever is prepared to pay.
The wording differs from the men's game in one respect that matters. The Premier League rule is a cap on the non-homegrown: a men's club with only five homegrown players simply names a squad of twenty-two and breaks nothing. The women's regulation is drafted as a positive requirement. Eight is a minimum the list must contain, and a club carrying six is in breach of an FA regulation that the competition rules import directly.
In practice nobody reaches that point, because the arithmetic is visible months ahead. A club thin on homegrown seniors has two ways out. It can sign domestic players it might not otherwise have chosen, or it can move academy graduates on to the list, where they count towards the eight and occupy places that a more experienced player would have had. Either way the result is the same: fewer of the twenty-five places are available for the players the head coach would pick first. That is the real penalty. No fine or points deduction is needed when the usable squad has already shrunk.
Where a breach does occur, the general machinery applies. The league's Executive Operational Committee can refuse a registration, and it has the power to place a registration embargo on a club in breach of the rules on players until the cause has been put right.
WSL2 asks for far more
The second tier works on a sliding scale, and a steep one.
Fifteen of twenty-five is three in five. A WSL2 club is required by regulation to be mostly domestic in a way a WSL club is not, and a side promoted from the second tier arrives with a squad shaped by that table. It then finds itself competing for the same imported players as everyone else with seven more places to offer them than it had the season before.
Registration windows, the March cut-off and the free-agent exception
WSL Football's board nominates two periods each season in which registrations and transfers are allowed, one opening before the season and one during it, and tells the clubs the dates. FIFA's regulations limit how long a national association's two periods may run in total, which is why the English windows look much like everyone else's. The competition rules themselves carry no dates. They are set year by year.
Inside a window a club may register, transfer or borrow contract players and non-contract players, and may borrow academy contract players. Outside one, almost nothing moves. The rulebook lists the exceptions and the committee must give reasonable consideration to a request that falls within them:
- a goalkeeper, where injuries have left the club with fewer than two fit senior keepers;
- a player whose last club has ceased to trade;
- a temporary replacement for a player who has taken pregnancy, adoption or family leave, or the return of a player from such leave;
- anything else the committee accepts as exceptional.
What a free agent can and cannot do
Then there is the free agent, who has a rule to herself. A player whose registration expired or was cancelled before the end of a transfer window, and who has not been registered with any club since, may sign outside the windows. The timing is the catch. A player released in October, after the summer window has shut, does not qualify until the winter window has come and gone. The men's version of the same idea is explained in our guide to signing free agents outside the window.
Even she runs into a wall in spring. Any new registration or transfer received after five o'clock in the afternoon on the fourth Thursday in March is declined, subject to the committee's power to reconsider. The purpose is plain: no club should be able to sign a player for the closing weeks of a title race or a relegation fight.
- SignatureThe player and an authorised signatory of the club sign the registration form and, for a professional, the playing contract.
- SubmissionThe forms go to the competition secretary and the FA through the online registration system within five days of signing.
- ClearanceA player from abroad needs an International Transfer Certificate, and one without the right to work in the UK needs an FA endorsement and a visa.
- ApprovalBoth the FA and WSL Football confirm the registration. Until both have done so she cannot play.
- Squad listShe is added to the list, provided the club has a place and still meets the homegrown minimum.
- Matchday deadlinePaperwork must be in at least four hours before kick-off, or by four o'clock on the last weekday before a weekend match.
The sequence set by the competition rules. The endorsement and clearance steps apply only to players who need them.
Deadline day in the women's game is therefore mostly an administrative race. The deal is rarely the problem. The paperwork is: a player from abroad needs international clearance, and one without the right to work in the UK needs an endorsement and a visa as well, and none of that is in the club's hands once the forms have gone in.
One more restriction is easy to miss. A club cannot register the transfer of a player who has been with the selling club for fewer than fourteen days, unless she is a goalkeeper. It stops a registration being passed through a friendly club on its way somewhere else.
WSL loan rules: six in a season, three from any one club
Loans are how the top division's academies give teenagers senior football and how the second tier gets players it could not afford to buy. The rules call the ordinary version a standard loan, keep a separate short-term loan for moves down to the National League, and put four numbers on the standard kind.
| Limit | Number | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Standard loans a club may register in a season | 6 | Contract and academy contract players combined |
| Borrowed from the same club at the same time | 3 | Contract and academy contract players combined |
| Outfield players over 23 on loan | 2 | Goalkeepers are not counted |
| Days before a loan can be ended early | 28 | And then only during a transfer window |
| Academy registrations one club may place with another | 3 | Academy Development Registrations, covered below |
A standard loan between two clubs in the professional leagues must run for a half season or a full one. Nothing in between is approved. A half season is the period from the start of the campaign to the opening of the second window, or from that opening to the end. Loans between two WSL clubs are permitted, as are loans down to WSL2, out to any league the FA authorises, and to or from a club abroad under FIFA's regulations.
Recalls, and why they are narrower than fans assume
A recall clause may be written only into a full-season loan, and it may be triggered only during the second transfer window. A half-season loan cannot carry one. Beyond that, a loan can end early by written agreement of both clubs and the player, but not inside the first twenty-eight days and not outside a window unless the committee gives permission in exceptional circumstances.
The guidance attached to the rule is unusually candid. An injury outside a window, it says, is to be dealt with by amending the loan, for instance the split of wages, and not by ending it. A WSL club that loses two centre-backs in November cannot simply summon its loanee back from the second tier.
Goalkeepers are the exception, as they are throughout the rulebook. A loaned goalkeeper may be subject to a recall clause exercisable at any time, though only in extenuating circumstances and with the committee's consent, and once recalled she cannot go back to finish the loan.
Playing against the parent club
Supporters often assume a rule bars a loanee from facing the club that owns her registration. The published competition rules contain no such clause. They say that a loan is made on whatever terms the two clubs and the player agree, so any bar on playing against the parent club has to be written into that agreement. Where it is, the effect on the pitch is the same; the source is the contract, not the rulebook. In the cup the rulebook is explicit about something else: no player may appear for more than one club in the same season's competition, an emergency goalkeeper aside.
The money follows the registration. A loaned player stays on the payroll of the club that holds her permanent registration, and that club invoices the borrower on the terms of the loan. How the men's lower divisions handle the same questions is covered in the EFL's loan rules.
Academy Development Registration, the rule once called dual registration
Dual registration is still the phrase people search for. The rulebook now calls it an Academy Development Registration, and it is the mechanism that lets an eighteen-year-old train with a WSL squad all week, play ninety minutes for a third-tier club on Sunday and turn out for her own under-21s the following Wednesday.
It is open only to PGA players and reserve players. Contracted seniors cannot use it. A player in either category may hold a second, concurrent registration with one other club, on one condition about where that club plays. It must either be in the other professional division, so that a WSL academy player can register with a WSL2 club and the reverse, or sit outside the two professional leagues altogether. She cannot be registered with two clubs in the same division, which would have her playing for both sides of a league fixture list.
Under the second registration she can play league matches for the receiving club, and cup matches if both clubs agree. She remains eligible for academy and development fixtures at her own club. The detail that makes the system work is the route back.
Her parent club can pick her for its first team at any point by giving the other club twenty-four hours' written notice. Doing so ends the second registration. So the recall is instant but it is also final for that spell, which discourages a WSL club from pulling a teenager back for a place on the bench and then expecting to send her out again the next week.
Three further limits apply:
- she may not play for both clubs within the same forty-eight hours;
- no club may place more than three of its academy players with the same receiving club at once;
- outside the transfer windows, a registration of this kind is allowed only with a club in tiers three to five of the pyramid.
A last condition catches the player on the edge of the first team. Once she has been named on a first-team sheet for her parent club, she can take up a registration with another club in the professional leagues only at the next transfer window.
The arrangement suits everybody when it works. The teenager plays against adults, the receiving club gets a player it could not otherwise attract, and the parent club keeps her in its own building. How girls come to be in those academies in the first place is traced in our guide to girls' football academies in England.
The emergency goalkeeper loan and the conditions attached
A squad of twenty-five usually contains three goalkeepers. Two injuries in a fortnight and a club is one training-ground collision from fielding a midfielder in gloves. The rules provide for that, and only that.
The test is specific. The league will consider a request to register a goalkeeper outside a transfer window where, as a result of injuries, the club has fewer than two fully fit goalkeepers available for selection. Keepers registered as academy contract players, PGA players or reserve players are left out of the count, so a club with one fit senior goalkeeper and a seventeen-year-old in the academy meets the condition.
The registration can be permanent or temporary, and a temporary one is for seven days or fourteen. Longer cover means going back to the committee. Approval is discretionary, and the rule lets the committee attach whatever limitations it thinks necessary, which in practice starts with evidence of the injuries.
Several other rules are relaxed to make it workable. The fourteen-day minimum a player must spend registered with her old club before a transfer does not apply to goalkeepers. The bar on appearing for two clubs in one cup season does not apply to an emergency goalkeeper loan. And on the day itself, if every goalkeeper named on the team sheet becomes unfit between the exchange of teams and kick-off, a registered goalkeeper who was not on the sheet may replace her.
The men's game has its own version, built around a seven-day term and set out in our guide to emergency goalkeeper loans. The women's rule is recognisably the same idea. What differs is the surrounding squad: with fewer professionals on the books, a WSL club reaches the threshold sooner.
Matchday squads: nine substitutes, five changes, three stoppages
Twenty players are involved on a WSL matchday, eleven starting and nine on the bench. The team sheet goes to the referee and to a representative of the opposition at least seventy-five minutes before kick-off, and a member of the coaching staff attends a briefing with the match officials no later than an hour before.
- 11Players in the starting team
- 9Substitutes who may be named
- 5Substitutes who may be used
- 3Stoppages in which to use them
From rule 5.19 of the competition rules. Concussion substitutions are permitted on top of the five.
Five substitutes may be used. They must be introduced in no more than three stoppages during play, and half-time is free: a change at the interval does not use up one of the three. When both teams make a change in the same stoppage, each is treated as having used an opportunity. A club that makes single changes on sixty, seventy and eighty minutes has therefore finished its substitutions with two players still unused, which is why head coaches so often send on two at once.
Concussion substitutes
Rule 5.19.2 allows concussion substitutions under the protocol issued by the International Football Association Board and adopted by the league. If a player suffers a concussion, or is suspected of one, her club may replace her permanently without the change counting against the five, and the opposing club receives an additional substitution to keep the numbers level. The details of the protocol, and the reasoning behind a permanent replacement over a temporary one, are in our guide to the concussion substitute rule.
Late changes to the team sheet
Altering the team after the sheets have been exchanged brings a fixed penalty, with three exceptions. A starter who is injured in the warm-up may be replaced by one of the named substitutes, and that substitute's place on the bench may then be filled by a registered player who was not on the sheet. The withdrawn starter cannot reappear on the bench. A named substitute who becomes unfit may also be replaced. And the goalkeeper provision described above applies.
One rule on selection reads oddly beside the squad cap. A club must field its strongest available team in a league match, and a breach goes to an independent tribunal. That is the reason wholesale rotation before a European tie tends to be explained in terms of knocks and fatigue.
In the cup the limit is also five changes in three stoppages. Drawn ties there go straight to penalties with no extra time, and no further substitution is given because a match has gone to a shoot-out.
Age and contract rules: sixteen to play, and the step to a first contract
A player may not be registered to play in the WSL, WSL2 or the league's cup before she has reached her sixteenth birthday. There is no dispensation. An exceptional fifteen-year-old in a club's academy can train with the first team but cannot appear on a team sheet.
From sixteen she can play as a PGA player, which is to say as an academy registrant, without a professional contract and without taking up a place on the squad list. That is the status in which most teenage debuts in English women's football are made. To select her, the club completes a registration form for the senior competitions and has it approved; from then on she may take part in any number of matches.
The professional contract is a separate step, and the competition rules do not set its minimum age. That belongs to Rule C of the FA's rules, which governs every playing contract in English football, and it has been revised more than once as the women's game has professionalised. What the competition rules make plain is that a contract player can be under eighteen, because they cap the length of such a contract. Before the first professional deal, the options are an academy contract or the academy registration with no contract at all. The equivalent thresholds across English football are compared in our guide to the age at which a professional contract can be signed.
A few terms are fixed by the competition rules themselves:
- a contract signed by a player under eighteen cannot last longer than three years;
- every playing contract must expire on 30 June, whatever year that falls in;
- the exception is a monthly contract, which may be extended any number of times, with seven days' notice owed to the player before a third or later extension;
- an international transfer involving a player under eighteen needs FIFA's clearance for minors before the registration can be completed.
The gap between sixteen and the first contract is the awkward part. A player good enough for the first team at sixteen can be playing in front of several thousand people on an academy registration. English clubs have lost teenagers in exactly that window, to professional leagues abroad and to American universities, and the academy contract, which can be loaned out like a professional one, is how the rulebook tries to close it.
Overseas signings: Governing Body Endorsement and how the points test works
Since the United Kingdom left the European Union, any player who is not a British or Irish citizen and has no settled or pre-settled status needs permission to work here. For a footballer that means a Governing Body Endorsement from the FA, a certificate of sponsorship from the club and a visa under the Home Office's International Sportsperson route. The endorsement is the step the club cannot control, and until the visa follows it the signing is not complete in any sense that matters on a pitch.
The endorsement route is open to clubs in the top two tiers, which is one of the least discussed lines between professional and semi-professional women's football in England.
There are two ways through. The first is automatic. A player who has appeared in a large enough share of her country's competitive internationals over the reference period passes outright, and how large depends on where that country sits in FIFA's women's ranking. The higher the nation, the lower the share required.
The second is points. A player who does not pass automatically is scored on her club football: how much of her league's minutes she played, how strong that league is judged to be, how her club finished, and what continental football she played. Leagues are sorted into bands, and the same share of minutes is worth more in a stronger band than in a weaker one. The pass mark, the points available under each heading and the list of leagues in each band are set in the FA's criteria for women players, which are republished each season and have been adjusted since the system began, so any figure quoted from an old edition should be checked against the current one.
- Automatic testHer share of her country's competitive internationals is checked against the level set for that nation's place in FIFA's women's ranking.
- Points testIf she does not pass outright, her club football is scored on minutes, the band of her league, her club's finishing position and continental football.
- Exceptions PanelA player who falls short can have her case put to an Exceptions Panel, which looks at circumstances the scores do not capture.
- EndorsementThe FA issues the Governing Body Endorsement, or refuses it.
- VisaThe club issues a certificate of sponsorship and the player applies for a visa under the International Sportsperson route.
- RegistrationWith international clearance and the work permission in place, the registration can be approved and she can be added to the squad list.
The sequence for a player without the right to work in the UK. The thresholds behind each test are set in the FA's criteria for that season and are not reproduced here.
The effect is easy to see in outline. A first-choice player at a leading club in one of the strongest European leagues clears the bar without difficulty. A regular starter in a mid-ranked league, at a club that played no continental football, can fall just short, and that is the case the Exceptions Panel exists for. The men's equivalent is a separate scheme with its own numbers, and the two should not be read across.
Where WSL2 and the league's cup differ on squad numbers and eligibility
One rulebook covers both professional divisions and the cup, so the list of differences is shorter than might be expected. The squad cap of twenty-five is the same. So are the loan limits, the transfer windows, the bench of nine and the five substitutions.
The differences that exist are these.
| Rule | WSL | WSL2 |
|---|---|---|
| Homegrown players required | A flat minimum of 8 | A sliding scale, 15 in a squad of 25 |
| Academy | Every club must operate one | A promoted club has two years to obtain a licence and open it |
| Reserve players | Not used, since every club runs an academy | Available until the club's academy is running |
| Playing surface | Grass | Grass or an approved artificial pitch |
| Sponsoring overseas players | Permitted | Permitted, and not below this tier |
The reserve-player provision deserves a sentence of explanation. A club arriving in WSL2 from the third tier is not obliged to have a compliant academy on day one. Until it does, it has no PGA players to place outside the squad list, so the rules let it register non-contract reserve players to fill the same role.
The cup is the competition for the clubs of both divisions, renamed the Players Cup for 2026-27, and its format is covered in our guide to the Women's League Cup. On eligibility it adds two points to the league rules. No player may appear for more than one club in the competition in a single season, the emergency goalkeeper excepted. And a player on an Academy Development Registration may play in it for the receiving club only if both clubs have agreed.
The cup also changes who is available without changing a rule. Clubs that have qualified for UEFA competition do not enter, and a first stage of six matches in the autumn is where most academy registrants get their senior minutes.
How the rules compare with the Premier League's 25 and the NWSL's roster
The number is the same as the Premier League's and the design behind it is different.
| Feature | WSL | Premier League | NWSL |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior list | 25 | 25 | A roster limit set by the league |
| Homegrown rule | At least 8 on the list | No more than 17 who are not homegrown | None |
| Young players outside the list | Academy registrants, any number | Under-21 players, any number | No academy exemption of the English kind |
| Limit on foreign players | Through the homegrown minimum and work permits | Through the homegrown cap and work permits | International slots allotted to each team |
| Control on spending | A ratio of revenue | Financial rules based on accounts | A fixed salary cap for every team |
Against the men's top flight the differences are of drafting more than intent. The Premier League caps the players who are not homegrown and lets under-21s play without being listed, as set out in our guide to Premier League squad size rules. The WSL requires the homegrown players to be present and draws its exemption around academy status, not date of birth. The women's rule is slightly the stricter of the two, since a small squad does not escape it.
Against the NWSL the difference is one of philosophy. The American league controls squads through a roster limit, a salary cap that is the same for every team and a set number of international slots. It has no homegrown rule and needs none, because the slots do that work directly: they limit foreign players by passport, which the English rule pointedly does not. Nor does it offer anything like the English academy registration, under which a club can carry a dozen teenagers who count against nothing.
Neither model is plainly better. The English one rewards clubs that develop players and leaves spending to a separate rulebook, described in our guide to the WSL salary cap. The American one produces a more even league and makes it harder for any club to build the kind of depth a Champions League campaign demands. A WSL head coach with twenty-five seniors and eight academy players in training has a squad an NWSL counterpart is not allowed to assemble, and that is the plainest measure of the difference.
More on the women's game, from the pyramid to the national team, is collected on our football pages and in the full list of guides on the England hub.