London City Lionesses were a second-tier, semi-professional club two years ago. Now they have signed a two-time Ballon d’Or winner.
Alexia Putellas has left Barcelona after 14 years and will be a Women’s Super League player from September.
She is leaving Catalonia for England as the face of the most dominant team in women’s football, having won 10 league titles, four Champions League crowns and a World Cup with Spain. Putellas scored 232 goals in 507 appearances for Barca and has won a record 147 caps for Spain.
At 32, she remains among the best midfielders in the game and showed exactly why with two goals in Spain’s 4-0 World Cup qualifying victory over England in Mallorca in June, a result that helped Spain secure automatic qualification for the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil.
For the WSL, it is a landmark moment. England are top of UEFA’s association coefficient rankings ahead of Spain, Germany and France, but the league has spent years trying to prove it can consistently attract the biggest names in world football while they are still operating at the highest level. Putellas choosing London City is the strongest evidence yet that it can.
The league has seen transformative signings before, when Chelsea paid a world-record £1.1million ($1.38m) fee to sign Naomi Girma from San Diego Wave in January 2025, making her the first female footballer to break the £1million barrier. Arsenal’s capture of Alessia Russo from Manchester United in 2023 brought England’s most marketable player to north London and Pernille Harder’s £250,000 move from Wolfsburg to Chelsea in 2020 was considered a watershed moment for the women’s transfer market.
Naomi Girma signed for Chelsea in January 2025 (Harriet Lander – Chelsea FC/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)
Putellas moves the dial further and will become the first Ballon d’Or winner to play for an English club.
A club entering only its second WSL season would normally be expected to build patiently, investing in players who can develop alongside the project and form the foundation of long-term success. Owner Michele Kang appears determined to accelerate that process instead.
The American billionaire purchased the club in 2023 and has rapidly turned it from an ambitious Championship side into one of the most talked-about projects in the women’s game. The seven-figure signing of midfielder Grace Geyoro from Paris Saint-Germain signalled that London City were not interested in a gradual climb towards the top of the WSL. The expected arrivals of former England goalkeeper Mary Earps and Mapi Leon, another Barcelona star, will only reinforce that and provide manager Eder Maestre with star quality.
Three years ago, London City were playing in front of crowds of around 400 supporters in Dartford, Kent, with a one-person marketing department. Last season, they averaged around 3,000 supporters and recorded a club-record attendance of 5,440 during their debut WSL campaign.
Putellas has spent much of the last decade competing in Champions League finals. She played in front of more than 91,000 supporters at the Camp Nou for Barcelona’s Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid in 2022, a world-record attendance for a women’s club match at the time.
She now finds herself making the move from Barcelona to Bromley, a suburb in south-east London, where their Hayes Lane home holds just over 6,000 supporters — fewer than 2,000 of them seated, most of which will surely be sold out each week given the players arriving.
But the contrast paints the picture of Kang’s ambitious project.
Michele Kang with the Lionesses Championship trophy in May 2025 (Matt Lewis – The FA/The FA via Getty Images)
The NWSL in North America averages more than 10,000 fans per match and has built a level of parity rarely seen elsewhere in women’s football. For much of the past decade, if a global superstar became available, the assumption was that the clubs in the United States would be among the frontrunners and Putellas choosing London City over them shows how much the WSL’s standing has changed. Boston Legacy, one of the league’s expansion teams, was one of the last remaining offers standing before Putellas opted for London City and the WSL.
Kang is not a stranger to disrupting expectations and, under her ownership, the Washington Spirit have become one of the NWSL’s flagship clubs, while her acquisition of OL Lyonnes placed the most successful club in women’s football history within her growing portfolio.
There is one issue, though. Putellas is 32. Earps is 33. Leon is 30. They are short-term signings bought to win now.
If the objective is to become a sustainable challenger to Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City over the next decade, Kang and the hierarchy should look no further than where Putellas made her name.
Barcelona did not become the dominant force in European football because they signed Putellas from Levante in 2012. They became Barcelona because they built an environment capable of producing and sustaining players such as Putellas, Aitana Bonmati and Claudia Pina.
This is not a WSL giant like Arsenal, Chelsea or Manchester City attracting a superstar, it is a club that was in the Championship little more than a year ago convincing the captain of Barcelona’s golden generation to buy into its future.
Putellas will not have joined for mid-table mediocrity — Kang and the rest of the WSL will now expect success.
