Baltic Women’s Football League 2025 starts today, on 8th of March, as Latvian RFS Women host Lithuanian FC Gintra at 19:00 local time in Riga.
The new season of the regional Baltic Women’s Football League (BWFL) starts today, on the International Women’s Day, as Latvian Cup winners RFS Women host regional women’s football powerhouse FC Gintra from Šiauliai, Lithuania. The match will take start at 19:00 local time in Rimi Olympic Centre in Riga. Entrance is free of charge and live broadcast will be available via the futbols.tv platforms (also free of charge but registration needed).
RFS Women, formerly known as SFK Riga until the merger into the FC RFS club system at the beginning of last year, are the current Latvia Cup holders and last year’s BWFL silver medalists, having narrowly lost to FC Flora Women in the final of the competition.
The winter transfer window has seen much activity from RFS Women as they facilitated transfers of a number of their key players to larger clubs abroad. There have been some replacements but it remains to be seen if the squad will be as competitive as in the previous years. They did just win the domestic pre-season friendly tournament – the Winter Cup – beating FK Auda Women 3-0 in the final and have the first ever Latvian Women’s Super Cup against Riga FC Women to look forward to on the 14th of March.
FC Gintra, on the other hand, brought in some exciting players during the winter – Nigerian striker Victoria Igbonoba likely being the headline signing of this year. They are the undisputed women’s football champions of Lithuania, having won every single domestic league title since 2005. They have also dominated the BWFL, winning four of the last six competitions.
With the rise of women’s football in the region, however, Gintra are now finding themselves facing more competition, having barely made it to the play-off round of BWFL last season, ultimately finishing third.
It is difficult to predict who will win today, but with RFS Women experiencing major squad changes with many of their leaders departing for that next step in their career, they are almost certainly the underdogs against alarmed by recent events, but determined to remain dominant Gintra side.
Baltic Women’s Football League is an international women’s football competition between the top two teams in the women’s domestic championships of each of the Baltic states – Estonia’s Naiste Meistriliiga, Latvia’s Sieviešu Līga and Lithuania’s Moterų A Lyga – compete in a round robin format, with no fixtures between both teams from each country. There is a league phase followed by playoffs and the finals for gold, silver and bronze. It has been running in one form or another, with some interruptions, since 2005.