The Alessia Cup: The Tournament Built to Keep Girls in the Game

Header Image: Alessia Russo with young fans at a 2023 England signing event (Getty)

When 180 girls stepped onto the pitch at New River Leisure Centre in Tottenham on 6 November, it looked like a normal, albeit huge, girls’ football tournament. But behind the noise, colour and chaos, the inaugural Alessia Cup was doing something far more ambitious: directly confronting the participation gap that quietly pushes girls out of sport long before talent has time to grow.

A Public First report commissioned by Sky, Game Changing, revealed the scale of the problem: girls aged 11–18 miss out on 280 million hours of sport every year compared to boys. That statistic has become a rallying point for Alessia Russo, whose vision, shared with Goals4Girls and Sky, is to level the playing field and keep girls engaged in sport at the exact age they’re most likely to walk away.

The Alessia Russo Foundation

Launched in October 2025 by England and Arsenal forward Alessia Russo, the foundation is committed to creating opportunities for girls and young women in sport – enabling them to play sport with pride, learn with purpose and live with power. Through targeted programmes the foundation seeks to reduce dropout, expand access to sport, education and wellbeing resources, and tackle barriers such as low confidence, limited representation and body-image pressures. Its work combines structured sports programmes, visible role-models, community-led support and inclusive football pathways designed to inspire and retain girls.

The Alessia Cup is the Foundation’s marquee moment, packaging all of this into a single day that’s built around empowerment as much as performance.

Goals4Girls

For more than a decade, Goals4Girls has been one of London’s most effective sport-for-development organisations. They use football as a platform for something bigger: mentoring, leadership training, education support and mental-health guidance.

Their mission has remained constant: Get girls into football. Keep girls in football. Use the game to build confidence, resilience and opportunity.

The Alessia Cup is an extension of that ethos – scaled, supported and spotlighted.

An Initiative the Sport Needs

The numbers coming out of Goals4Girls show exactly what structured support can do. Ninety percent of girls in their programme report major boosts in confidence, resilience and the ability to build friendships. More than half experience fewer symptoms linked to depression. And among girls who started the year at risk of school exclusion, 94% completed the entire academic year.

That’s before you even factor in the physical and mental health benefits of playing sport regularly – the kind of benefits every girl should have access to, not just the lucky few.

And then there’s the bigger picture. Girls losing 280 million hours of sport every year compared to boys is staggering. The participation gap is massive, but initiatives like the Alessia Cup prove that when opportunities arrive early, with intention and proper backing, the numbers can move in the right direction.

This isn’t about unearthing the next superstar. It’s about giving girls the time, space and support to decide who they want to be – a forward, a coach, a creator, a leader, or simply a girl who finds joy, freedom and power in the game.