WSL Sees Spending Galore with Three £1m+ Transfers and Two World Record Fees

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Female Footballer Standing on Ball

Most English football fans, at least of a certain age, will know that Trevor Francis was the first £1m player in British football. Much as Nottingham Forest icon Brian Clough liked to claim it was actually £999,999 (to reduce the pressure on Francis, supposedly), it is generally accepted that the fee was indeed the magical seven figures (and with various extras may have been as high as £1.2m).

Less well known, in this country at least, is that Italian Giuseppe Savoldi was actually the first £1m player in the world. Born in 1947, the attacker moved from Bologna to Napoli in 1975 for around £1.2m, or the rather more impressive sounding two billion Italian Lira! He had a palindromic club career, starting and ending at Atalanta, with his spell in Naples sandwiched by stints on either side with Bologna. Giuseppe Savoldi, remember the name!

Younger fans are perhaps more likely to know the name of the first female player to be signed for over £1m. After what seemed like a long wait, Olivia Smith finally became the first woman to be involved in a seven-figure transfer when she was signed by Arsenal from Liverpool.

The First Ever £1m Women’s Player

Smith’s transfer took place in July this summer, with Liverpool making a very healthy profit on a player they only bought 12 months earlier. They paid £200,000 for the Canadian, and she performed very well for the club. Now aged just 21, she bagged nine goals for the Merseysiders, including the first by a woman at Anfield. Her performances were also good enough to see her crowned PFA Young Player of the Year. She became the first non-English player to be honoured with the award, and Arsenal were subsequently happy to make her the sport’s first £1m woman.

A couple of months is a long time in football, though, particularly women’s football at the moment. Largely thanks to the incredible success of the Lionesses over the past few years, women’s football has really exploded in England and the UK in general. There is more interest, greater investment and more lucrative TV and sponsorship deals.

As we have seen in the men’s game, that financial cocktail rapidly leads to spiralling transfer fees (and, the players hope, pay) and Smith’s tag as the most expensive female footballer didn’t last long. The WSL transfer window closed on the 4th of September, and we saw a flurry of late deals, including some huge transfers.

Smith Most Expensive for Just 35 Days

As it transpired, Smith was the costliest woman in football for just 35 days. But it was not a WSL transfer that knocked her off top spot, but instead Lizbeth Ovalle’s £1.1m move from Mexican side Tigres to US team Orlando Pride. The 25-year-old Mexican winger is an established international, with 64 caps and 18 goals to her name.

Fans in the UK will see relatively little of her, unless they are among the hardcore who tune into the American National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). She is a brilliant performer and her signing is a real statement of intent from Orlando, who finished first in the league in 2024 and also went on to claim the Championship through the play-off system.

Orvalle Soon Usurped Too

Grace Geyoro Playing for PSG
Grace Geyoro is currently the world’s most expensive female footballer following her £1.4m transfer from PSG to London City Lionesses. Victor Velter / Shutterstock.com

Excellent as the Mexican is, she, too, can no longer claim to be the most expensive player in the world. The name for stats fans to remember now – though how long that will be the case we cannot know – is French star Grace Geyoro.

Geyoro boasts over 100 caps for France, where she has lived since moving there with her family as a baby from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Considered one of the best midfielders of her generation, she has won the U17 World Cup and the U19 Euros with France. She has spent her entire senior career with PSG, twice helping them to the Champions League final.

London City Lionesses, newly promoted to the WSL for the 2025/26 campaign, paid PSG a cool £1.4m for her signature. The Lionesses mean business this year, and their owner, Michele Kang (who, not entirely coincidentally, owns one of PSG’s big rivals, Lyon), has really splashed the cash. They have brought in a raft of new players, including England’s Nikita Parris, Dutch midfielder Daniëlle van de Donk and perhaps most exciting of all, rising Spanish star Lucia Corrales (for around £450,000).

Other Big Signings

Just before the WSP transfer window shut at 11 pm, we saw another huge deal and another £1m player. The dominant force of the Women’s Super League, Chelsea, strengthened their hand by signing US star Alyssa Thompson. The initial fee was $1.5m, or around £1.1m, though it is believed that her former club, Angel City (based in LA and founded just five years ago), stand to receive a lot more than that.

London City Lionesses’ move for Geyoro was not yet confirmed when the Thompson transfer was announced. At that stage, it was believed that Chelsea’s new signing could become the most expensive player in the world when potential add-ons were included but in the end, the technicalities were moot once the blockbuster transfer of Geyoro was concluded.

Thompson, aged just 20, has already played for the US national team 20 times (scoring three goals) and no doubt came highly recommended by Emma Hayes. She is fast, skilful and should give the WSL champions even more attacking options.

Many of the other deals in the WSL were loans, player swaps or involved undisclosed fees. Perhaps the highest profile of those saw Manchester rivals City and United swap players. Jess Park swapped blue for red, with fellow Euro 2025 squad member Grace Clinton moving from United to City.

Undisclosed deals are rather annoying for fans and pundits. However, there was another big-money deal involving two US teams, as midfielder Ally Sentnor switched from Utah Royals to Kansas City Currents for $600,000, around £450,000. She has scored four times in 10 games in 2025 for the US national side, and the 21-year-old could eventually make her way to the WSL.