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The women’s game’s first £1m signing, Olivia Smith, wasted no time at all in demonstrating her worth as she scored a goal-of-the-season contender on her debut for Arsenal. As the Women’s Super League’s approaches its second weekend, the gauntlet has already been thrown down for the second and third players to command a seven-figure transfer fee to respond.
Chelsea’s new signing, Alyssa Thompson, and the newest arrival at London City Lionesses, Grace Geyoro, are in line for their debuts on Sunday. Chelsea travel to Aston Villa and London City host Manchester United at midday.
The trio’s moves topped a dramatic WSL summer transfer window in which record sums were spent. While most deals continued to involve either small undisclosed fees or free transfers, something upwards of £6m was spent by WSL teams by the close of the window on 4 September, smashing all previous records.
Days earlier, Fifa had revealed that global spending on women’s football transfers across the summer had surpassed $12m (£8.8m), an increase of more than 80% from the summer of 2024, moving past $10m for the first time. But that snapshot was published before Thompson and Geyoro’s transfers were concluded and a flurry of other deadline-day deals.
For Chelsea, the signing of Thompson was particularly tense. The USA winger’s former club Angel City were adamant they did not want to sell her and only did so when it became clear that Thompson had her heart set on the move. Instead, the NWSL club focused on agreeing the highest-possible transfer fee.
Extensive negotiations meant that Thompson did not even catch a flight from California to London until less than 24 hours before the English deadline of 11pm on 4 September, and she eventually put pen to paper on a five-year contract with about an hour to spare. The paperwork was finalised so close to the end of the window that the clubs did not announce it until the following day, with the upfront transfer fee understood to be just shy of $1.5m (£1.1m) plus significant add-ons.
After 20-year-old Thompson was introduced to the Stamford Bridge crowd on 5 September, the Chelsea head coach, Sonia Bompastor, said she hopes she can “make her debut soon”, adding: “As Chelsea, to be able to attract the best players is a good sign for the future. We never shy away from our ambitions.
“Alyssa is a great player, she is still young, but from a young age she has already a lot of potential, a lot of quality and talent. It was important for us to strengthen the squad and the team, and Alyssa was in our shortlist of top-class players. It’s important to have quality but also depth – Alyssa will add both.”
Thompson’s departure has prompted a debate in the US about the NWSL’s salary cap, with the former USA defender Becky Sauerbrunn telling The Women’s Game podcast: “I think we’ve reached a bit of an inflection point for the NWSL. Something has to give or else we will continue to lose some big-name players and players you want to build franchises around.”
It was not just the NWSL that lost big-name players to the WSL this summer, though. Paris Saint-Germain had fought off Chelsea’s attempts to sign Geyoro in 2022, for what would have then been a world record of £425,000, and the WSL champions have long held an interest in the midfielder. But on deadline day it was London City Lionesses who persuaded PSG to sell for a world-record fee of €1.65m (£1.42m), although London City have denied reports that the sum was that high. Regardless, it is another huge signing for the WSL and Michele Kang’s newly promoted club.
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Geyoro was not involved in the defeat at the Emirates in London City’s first top-flight match, although there were debuts for summer arrivals Katie Zelem, Nikita Parris and Elena Linari. Their first home fixture of the season could see Geyoro introduced, according to the London City Lionesses head coach, Jocelyn Prêcheur. “This is the goal, of course,” he said. “I’m quite impressed how hard she is working at the moment.
“We plan [on Friday] to see how she feels and if it’s reasonable or not to make her debut against Manchester United.”
Last week the Frenchman, who managed Geyoro at PSG, had said: “She is a complete player with a lot of experience. It has been a lot of talking all summer to make this deal but I’m very satisfied.”
Energetic, full of acceleration and with 18 league goals across the past two campaigns for PSG, Geyoro’s tally was more than any other midfielder in France’s top flight. The WSL certainly has a new group of international A-listers.
