Monaco United, a new women's football team, kicks off its history... with a derby against AS Monaco

The announcement inevitably had the effect of a bombshell on the Monegasque women's football scene. Three months ago, the Monaco United Football Club was born, with this ambitious project led by the legend Marco Simone, alongside Moris Pagniello, founder of the Racing City Group, and Justin Davis, its CEO. The ambition of reaching D1 Arkema in four years had been launched. When you consider that this year the first team will debut in D5, it's a hell of a journey that will have to be completed between now and then.

This summer, the work carried out was worthy of the name, as it was necessary to build the squad from A to Z, recruiting in France, Italy, Spain, Africa and Latin America. This means that the staff, headed by Marco Simone, had to build everything so that the players would be ready for the start of the D5 championship this weekend, which will begin with a Monaco derby against the AS Monaco Football Féminin reserve team.

A first Monaco derby in women's football

Cohesion, chemistry, game plan, physical preparation, workshops, everything was there. Two friendly matches(*) also took place with mixed fortunes. The first with a crushing victory on the Arles-Avignon pitch (5-1). The second was more difficult against the AC Milan U19s, with a defeat by the same score (1-5).

But the main thing is elsewhere. The primary objective is to have succeeded in finding an identity, benchmarks, and automatisms at the dawn of a 2025-2026 season that promises to be exciting. This is what the head coach praised: "I saw sequences of play that were perfectly in line with the fundamentals that I want to transmit, particularly in terms of forward play." Now it's time for the first Monaco women's derby in the history of football.

* – The team also lost in the Coupe de France against FC Carros (1-2).