In 1975 Italian attacker Giuseppe Savoldi became the world’s first £1m footballer when he moved from Bologna to Napoli. The Neapolitan outfit shelled out a cool two billion Italian Lira to bring him south, or about £1.2m. That smashed through the previous record of just over £900,000 that Barcelona paid Ajax for the services of a certain Johan Cruyff.
In British football, it was not until 1979 that a player was sold for a seven-figure sum when Trevor Francis moved from Birmingham City to Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest. Of course now the world transfer record has gone past seven figures, past eight and well into nine, with the men’s figure standing at a rather insane £200m (which Paris Saint-Germain paid to Barcelona to acquire the services of Neymar).
There has long been debate and confusion over transfer fees – Clough claimed that Francis actually cost £999,999 – largely to avoid any pressure of being the first £1m footballer! And whilst there is a certain lack of clarity about exactly how much Neymar cost and who got what out of the deal, it was certainly an astronomical sum.
In contrast, for all that women’s football has exploded over the last few years, particularly in England, even if it was already doing very well in various other nations, we are yet to see a £1m female footballer. We are, however, getting closer and closer and it only seems like a matter of time before the increased money in the women’s game sees a player sold for that magical seven-digit sum.
On the 26th of January, the world record was broken when Chelsea signed American ace Naomi Girma for £900,000. In this article we take a closer look at how the fee has risen and what the Blues will be getting for their money.
Who is Naomi Girma?
Girma was signed from US side San Diego Wave and, somewhat unusually for a player brought in for a record-breaking fee, she is a defender. Born in San Jose, California in 2000, she has played three seasons with San Diego and established herself as one of the very best defenders in the world.
Just 24 years old, she has already been capped 44 times for the USA and was part of the team that won gold at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. She has a string of honours with both club and country and a similar assortment of individual accolades, including being named the US Soccer Young Female Player of the Year (catchy name for the prize) and then following that up in 2023 by grabbing the senior award.
Her parents were both born in Ethiopia – her middle name is Haile, presumably after Ethiopian hero Haile Selassie – and she began her football education with Maleda Soccer Club. That was a team her father helped found, for the Ethiopian community, though she was also a keen gymnast and played basketball too.
From the age of 10 onwards she played for a series of more formal teams and quickly came to the attention of the US football scouts, entering the Olympic Development Program in her early teens. By 2018 she was considered to be the fifth-best prospect among college players by a US football website. She was playing for Stanford team, Stanford Cardinal at the time and it was clear that she was headed to the top.
In 2019 she helped her college team claim victory in the NCAA Division I tournament, also winning silverware with the US Under 17 and U20 teams. San Diego made her their first overall pick in the draft for the 2022 National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) and she made her pro debut in March that year. It was also the first game in the history of the Wave too, the San Diego outfit being an expansion side only added to the league that year.
In her rookie year, she was nominated for MVP but missed out; although she did enough to earn herself an extended contract. In 2023 she was part of a mean defence that earned her side the NWSL Shield (for best overall performance throughout the league phase) but the Wave missed out on the title. Girma, though, was named Defender of the Year for the second campaign in a row.
Chelsea’s Million Dollar Deal
In 2024 she continued to excel but her team struggled and at the start of 2025, Chelsea, no doubt after consulting their former boss Emma Hayes, who led the USWNT to Olympic gold, offered around $1.1m to bring her to England.
Women’s football may not yet have a million-pound footballer but it does have a million-dollar one, Girma the first to be sold for over $1m. For their substantial outlay, the west London outfit will be getting a phenomenal player and one who will partner perfectly with Millie Bright. The American said she was “really excited to play alongside” the Chelsea skipper, who also acts as vice-captain for the Lionesses.
Bright’s experience and different style of play should help the former San Diego star settle in and the two may well learn a lot from each other. Given how dominant the Blues have been in women’s football in this country it is a worrying sign for the rest of the WSL, whilst the club hierarchy will hope the addition of such a class act can help get them over the line in Europe.
Girma is a leader, like Bright, but is a more intelligent defender, with supreme pace and positioning, who can also pass the ball as well. To compare her to Virgil van Dijk may be a stretch, though Hayes, who has been around a long time, called her “the best defender I’ve ever seen”. No pressure then!
The Women’s World Record
The £900,000 that Chelsea paid the US side for Girma smashed the old world record, which was £685,000. That fee was paid by Bay FC almost a year ago for Zambian star Racheal Kundananji.
Racheal Kundananji signed to Bay FC in February for a world-record fee of $787,600.
Orlando Pride are set to finalise a near-record deal of $740,000 for striker Barbra Banda from Shanghai.
This means the two most expensive women’s players in the world are both from Zambia 😲🇿🇲 pic.twitter.com/99htAO9eSM
— ESPN Africa (@ESPNAfrica) March 6, 2024
Hayes’ old club have absolutely obliterated the old British record which was the £384,000 they themselves paid Levante for Colombia striker Mayra Ramirez in January 2024. That deal would itself have become a world record (prior to the Girma signing) if all add-ons were met, surpassing the £400,000 that Barcelona paid for England ace Keira Walsh in 2022. As these fees show, it is an exciting time for women’s football and the £1m barrier is sure to be broken soon.
It is a sign of how the game is changing that the record stood at just £200,000 for almost two decades, between 2002 and 2020. That was the amount Ray Vallecano paid for Brazilian midfielder Milene Domingues and it was not broken until 2020 when big-spenders Chelsea paid Wolfsburg £250k for Dane Pernille Harder. £1m is surely the next stop and we wouldn’t bet against it being Chelsea writing the cheque!