Sports Interactive, the makers of the iconic 'Football Manager' franchise, have just announced major plans to include women’s football in future releases.

Taking a "one sport, one game" approach, virtual managers across the world will be able to move seamlessly from managing a men’s team to a women’s team, and back again.

There’s a lot of work still to be done. Football Manager’s current database took almost three decades to compile. The level of detail that goes into creating one team is exponential, let alone teams across multiple leagues.

The Studio Director of Sports Interactive, Miles Jacobson, explained they’d been working on including women’s football for some time now, and fully understood the weight Football Manager has when progressing the women’s game.

“We know our voice is very powerful and we want to use it for good.

Longer term, as the women’s game grows in popularity, the financial rewards may come, but at the moment we’re embarking on this journey because we know it’s the right thing to do.”

Although still in the infancy of design stages, research into physical attributes have highlighted some potential key differences that need to be taken into game-play consideration.

“We found that there are more goals in women’s football scored from outside the box even though the shot power tends to be a little lower,” Jacobson explained.

Then there are slightly more challenging in-game questions and scenarios specific to the women’s game such as pregnancy and menstrual cycles that affect player and team performances.

Some might argue it’s been a long time coming, but this is definitely a huge step for the beautiful game, and one we can fully get behind.