UEFA technical observers' squad of the season

Inevitably, bearing in mind a hat-trick of titles, Olympique Lyonnais accounted for the biggest slice of the cake in the selection of the squad of the season and five of their players also completed a hat-trick – Griedge Mbock Bathy, Wendie Renard, Saki Kumagai, Eugénie Le Sommer and Dzsenifer Marozsán having been included in the select squad in both 2016 and 2017. All in all, seven of the 2017/18 squad had also been selected at the end of the previous season. As a pointer towards the trend at the top end of the women’s game, a salient feature is that eight of the squad were playing their football outside their native countries.

In Kyiv, the jury faced the task of paring down a ‘short’ list of 44 candidates, among them, it has to be mentioned as a positive factor in the aftermath of EURO 2017, five goalkeepers. The list also featured 14 defenders, 15 midfielders and 10 attacking players who operated in a variety of roles, ranging from target strikers to wing players. This was the jury’s verdict: