In Women, Football and Social Change in Saudi Arabia: Pioneer Player (Bloomsbury), Charlotte Lysa traces the emergence of women's football in Saudi Arabia from the infancy of grassroots women's team in 2005 to the launch of the first official, state-sponsored, competitions in 2020 – a period Saudi Arabia was going through rapid change. In his review, Payam Ansari especially highlights how the author recovers the agency of women whose efforts preceded the highly visible institutional transformation of recent years, while avoiding an overly simple story of either state-led modernisation or grassroots resistance.