List of most expensive women's association football transfers
Last updated
The following is a list of most expensive women's association football transfers, which details the highest transfer fees ever paid for players, as well as transfers which set new world transfer records.
The first transfer in women's football reported as a record was that of Milene Domingues from Fiammamonza to Rayo Vallecano in 2002, two decades before professionalism in Spanish women's football. The current transfer record was set by the transfer of Racheal Kundananji from Madrid CFF to Bay FC for €805,000 in February 2024.
Prior to women's football teams having oversight from football federations, compensation was still paid for some transfers. The first compensated transfer of a female footballer was of Molly Walker, from Lancaster Ladies to Dick, Kerr Ladies in 1918; Walker was offered expenses paid as well as payment in lieu for joining the team.[1][2] In the 1970s, various teams in Italy, and Olímpico de Villaverde in Spain, offered a signing fee for some players;[3][4] in 1973, Conchi Sánchez was paid Pts 75,000 (approximately €300 at the time) to leave Villaverde and join Gamma 3 Padova in Italy,[4] with Stade de Reims in France offering Pts 1million for Villaverde's Victoria Hernández a few weeks later.[5] Padova paid transfer fees in 1973 for Christia Nusser and Monika Bardof that exceeded those paid for male footballers in Spain's Tercera and even Segunda divisions.[6]
Highest transfer payments in women's association football
Sofie Svava, Jill Roord, Lena Oberdorf and Barbra Banda appear twice on the list. The players on the list include at least one from each continental region except Oceania (OFC): Europe (UEFA), North America (CONCACAF), South America (CONMEBOL), Africa (CAF), Asia (AFC). However, most are European; the purchasing clubs are all European, North American, or Asian.
This list only includes transfers where a fee amount is reported publicly. Fees are in thousands.
As of 23 April 2024
Fee broke the women's world football transfer record at the time of the transfer
Fee broke the national league record at the time of the transfer
Fee broke the women's record for a South American player at the time of the transfer
Fee broke the women's record for an Asian player at the time of the transfer
Fee broke the women's record for an African player at the time of the transfer
Fee broke the women's record for a North American player at the time of the transfer
Fee broke the women's record for a European player at the time of the transfer
The first transfer fee for a women's footballer known to be reported as a world record was the £200,000 ($310,000; €235,000)[41][40] paid for Milene Domingues in 2002.[lower-alpha 33] At the time, there was little to no money in women's football due to the limited number of professional leagues, and financial news focused on player salaries; Domingues received greater attention for the reported record salary she was to receive, though she ended up never playing for Rayo Vallecano, the club that signed her, due to non-Spanish players being unable to play in the Spanish women's league at the time. However, Domingues was not signed for her playing qualities, instead being a popular figure as the personable wife of Ronaldo, and her record signing was made more for promotional reasons. She fulfilled promotional duties at Rayo while returning to play for her previous team, Fiammamonza, without salary.[95]
This transfer sum was not overtaken until September 2020, when Pernille Harder was bought by Chelsea for £250,000 ($334,000; €280,000).[35] When, almost a year prior to Harder's transfer, Sam Kerr had also moved to Chelsea, focus was still on her large salary.[96][97][98] In beating the near 20-year record by her transfer, Harder said she hoped it would help start to show that women's football can also be a club business like men's football and receive more money.[99]
Harder gave similar comments when her record was beaten two years later by Barcelona buying Keira Walsh from Manchester City for £400,000 ($457,000; €470,000) in September 2022.[21] Walsh instead was coy, saying she did not think about the record much, that she wanted to play at the club and "it just so happens that's what they paid for [her]."[100]The Athletic and BBC Sport wrote that Walsh's transfer "shifted the ecosystem", having a significant impact on the market of women's football,[101][102] that it showed "even the top clubs are not immune to the risk of losing their best players to rivals who are now willing to spend".[102] It marked exponential growth for the transfer market;[101][102] spending in transfer windows had been growing, with the winter 2021–22 window setting a then-record for global transfers in one season at a total of around £364,000 ($488,000; €432,000).[103] Walsh's fee alone in the summer 2022 window eclipsed this, with further high transfer fees being paid as a domino effect supplementing the season total.[72]
The transfer was predicated on the growing popularity of women's football and its players in England and Spain;[72] with Walsh's fee having shown the financial power of this growth, fees continued accelerating in such markets.[104] In the next transfer window, Bethany England transferred (to Tottenham Hotspur from Chelsea) for a fee that equalled Harder's previous record.[105] Following this and a slew of other six-figure transfer fees in England's Women's Super League (WSL) in 2023, some WSL managers criticised the rapid spending growth of the larger clubs; in September 2023, England's head of women's football, Baroness Sue Campbell, said that future limits on spending would be introduced.[106]
Chelsea still made some large signings in January 2024, including buying forward Mayra Ramírez from Levante for a new world record fee of £426,000 ($544,000; €500,000).[12] The club in particular were seeking a striker, and players in this position were in high demand across Europe at the time.[107] Only weeks later, this fee was considerably beaten by another striker transferring out of the Liga F, when NWSL side Bay FC triggered the release clause of Madrid CFF's Racheal Kundananji to pay what would total £685,000 ($862,000; €805,000).[8] Kundananji's transfer fee came less than 18 months after Walsh's record, and was a 71% increase on that fee, which The Independent said demonstrated how significantly women's transfers had escalated in that period.[108]
The American National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) has a single-entity structure that resembles Major League Soccer[110] and domestic transaction rules that differ from other global leagues. NWSL players are contracted to the league itself rather than the clubs to which the league has assigned them.[111] Before the 2020 NWSL season, the league introduced allocation money, a cash-equivalent credit that clubs can purchase from the league. Allocation money can be used to exceed the league salary cap, fund club operations, or pay fee-involved loans and transfers for players outside of the league. Clubs can trade credits like other non-cash league assets.[112][113] A significant number of players in the NWSL then began being traded for allocation money.[114]
NWSL trades – including those for allocation money – have different principles both economically and holistically than domestic transfers in other leagues:[lower-alpha 35] domestic loans and transfers in the NWSL do not require player consent or a change of contract, as they are employed by the league which assigns them;[115]:5 allocation money trades can also involve non-cash assets with no equivalent monetary value (such as other players, NWSL Draft picks, international roster spots, and the right to initiate negotiations with a player who is not already under contract with the NWSL);[116] and no real currency is exchanged between transfer clubs, as the allocation money is a credit managed by the NWSL itself.[117]:6–7
The NWSL also limits the amount of allocation money a team can acquire in one season, though allows teams to retain purchased but unused allocation money credits in subsequent seasons.[118] Additionally, teams have traded players for credits they would acquire in future seasons.[119]
In 2024, the NWSL announced that it would begin to phase out allocation money with the plan to stop using it altogether at the end of 2026, citing exponential financial growth in foreign leagues as the reason it considered allocation money obsolete. At the same time, the NWSL also implemented an intra-league transaction fee system, a net transfer fee threshold of $500,000 for both intra- and inter-league transfers, and an additional 25-percent salary cap charge against net transfer fees exceeding $500,000.[120]
Largest allocation money trades
Victoria Pickett and Crystal Dunn appear in this list twice, the latter for two allocation money-involved trades in one day as part of a three-team transaction. The largest allocation-money transaction was for forward María Sánchez, who requested a trade for personal reasons communicated to her club, Houston Dash, shortly after it gave her the most expensive NWSL contract; the club obliged and traded her to San Diego Wave in exchange for an overall $500,000 in cash-equivalent credits, plus two years of international roster slots, in April 2024.[121]
This list only includes transactions involving more than $100,000. Fees are in thousands.
As of 19 April 2024
Fee broke the NWSL record for an allocation money-involved domestic player trade at the time
For the 2020 season, Spain introduced the "Compensation List", part of a wider agreement between women's football clubs as a step towards professionalism; intended to compensate the expenses of youth training when young players joined senior clubs,[166] the Compensation List ruled that players under the age of 23 could only transfer between Spanish clubs for a fee, even when their contract is expired. The club they were to leave would set an asking price, and if no other club was willing to pay (and the player did not move to a club outside of Spain), the original club had to re-sign the player with a salary increase matching a percentage of the asking price. There were criticisms of the Compensation List, as few clubs wanted to pay and it was seen to encourage young talents to leave the country.[167][168]
Before the Compensation List was accepted, a lawsuit seeking to prevent it was brought by Spanish players' union Futbolistas ON, arguing that it should be invalid due to not having been negotiated within labour agreements and due to being used as a disguised retention fee. Though the Court approved the Compensation List, it upheld that clubs which had not taken part in its negotiation (Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Athletic Club) could not use the Compensation List, and that cases of "disproportion" should have individual appeals (based on European litigation involving French clubs).[166] The highest fees set on the Compensation List were for Eva Navarro and Ona Batlle of Levante, each for €500,000, and Maite Oroz and Damaris Egurrola of Athletic Club, each for €250,000 – at the time the fees were set (ahead of the summer 2020 transfer window), all would have broken the world record.[169] Oroz and Egurrola had already announced their plans to depart Athletic Club,[170] and so the high fees were seen as punitive; Oroz had already signed for Real Madrid before the court case, with Real Madrid not wanting to pay the fee being one reason it was brought. As neither club was involved in negotiations, the fee was deemed invalid.[171][172]
By the end of 2020, after Batlle left the country and Navarro had been without a club until returning to Levante against her wishes, Spanish clubs agreed to limit the fees set on the Compensation List in order to prevent abuse.[173] The agreement that had created the List expired at the end of the season.[172]
Gallery
Racheal Kundananji, the most expensive women's footballer and most expensive women's forward
Keira Walsh, the most expensive women's midfielder
† In player transfers between the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and other leagues, the NWSL as a single-entity organization conducts the transaction and pays or receives any fees, rather than member clubs conducting the deal directly. NWSL clubs fund transactions by purchasing allocation money credits from the league, which can be traded between NWSL clubs or acquired from the league through non-financial means. Such transfers into the league are subject to FIFA transfer regulations. Once in the league, international players can be subject to different rules for domestic transfers within the NWSL.[117]:55–56
1 2 3 €700,000 release clause, €35,000 (5%) training fee applicable, and $75,000 (€70,000) additional variables.
1 2 €450,000 fixed and €50,000 variables that Levante expected to be met: one clause was that Ramírez must appear in 30% of games over her four-and-a-half year contract.[10] The potential total was reported in The Athletic to be equivalent to £460,000,[11] while it was described in Press Association reports as £384,000 and £42,000 in add-ons (£426,000).[12] The fee was considered to be meeting Ramírez' release clause; Spanish media reported prior to the signing that it was expected to be slightly below or equal to the previous record,[13] with English media focusing on how it exceeded the previous record purchase by Chelsea (a former world record)[14][15] and would be a British record.[16] Levante announced details of the fee at the same time as the transfer.[10]
1 2 3 Including bonuses up to €70,000 / £61,000. Initial fee of €400,000 / £348,000 would be a record in itself.[17]Forbes reported a fee of €500,000,[18] also describing Walsh as women's football's "first $500,000 player".[19] The approximately £400,000 figure is most consistently reported and accepted.[20][17]
1 2 Fee was player's release clause; it was triggered in February 2024 for Oberdorf to transfer at the end of the season (June 2024).
↑ Reported to be a club signing fee for Manchester City, and by Sky Sports to be a British record fee, it was announced as "in excess of £300,000".
↑ $275k with a $25k bonus for scoring 20 goals, and a 5% sell-on fee.[43]
↑ Including bonuses. Initial fee was around £70,000.[45]
1 2 Reported fee. Svava was not listed among the top 5 international women's transfers of 2022 by FIFA;[48] the transfer could not be higher than that of Jackie Groenen (reported as €150,000).
1 2 FIFA reported Temwa Chawinga's move to Wuhan as the second-most expensive transfer of 2020, behind Pernille Harder and ahead of Barbra Banda.[49] It was suggested that Temwa Chawinga was the most expensive player in the world before Harder,[50] though her reported €170,000 fee would be less than Domingues' 2002 record.[51] The combined fee of Temwa Chawinga and Banda was around $300,000.[52][53]
↑ Reported to be a new Norwegian transfer record, Blakstad's was the second-largest international transfer of 2022, above that of Mary Fowler.
1 2 Reported in advance to be a fee of "well over £100k",[67] Björn's agent said when the signing was announced that Chelsea was the only team to meet Everton's financial demands,[68] which had been placed at "£125,000 (€145,000)".[69]
↑ A six-figure transfer fee in GBP was paid, plus bonuses. Reported to be the highest known transfer fee between two Women's Super League teams, excluding bonuses.[72]
1 2 Though the selling club described the transfer as an undisclosed fee,[74] FIFA's transfer report placed Roord as the second-highest fee of 2021, above the reported €100,000 of Egurrola to Lyon (in fourth) and below Bennison to Everton in first.[75][76]
1 2 Contemporaneous reports said that Banda made this move as a free agent;[78][79] FIFA's transfer report listed her as the third-most expensive transfer of 2020 behind Harder and Temwa Chawinga.[49] The combined fee of Temwa Chawinga and Banda was around $300,000[52][53] and the reported fee for Chawinga was €170,000.[51] A report in 2023 mistakenly attributed the $300,000 to Banda's transfer alone.[80]
↑ Though the total fee is undisclosed, there are no other reported paid transfers of an OFC player.
↑ BBC Sport reported at the time that Domingues' transfer fee was "10 times the previous Spanish record for a female player".[41]El Mundo reported that there was a then-large transfer of two players from Torrejón to Levante in 2001 for €3,000 (Pts 500,000);[90]Maider Castillo and Mar Prieto were the two players who made this move,[91][92] with Castillo the player Levante had been set on.[93] When Mapi León joined Barcelona in 2017, it was reported as the first paid transfer between Spanish clubs.[94]
↑ The base fee for Ramírez's transfer was not greater than Walsh's total fee: the potential total fee for Ramírez, which would have made it a record, was not paid before it was overtaken by Kundananji's transfer fee, and so not all sources consider Ramírez's transfer a record.[108][109]
↑ $300,000 in intra-league transfer funds and $200,000 in allocation money
↑ $200,000 in allocation money, with an additional $50,000 contingent on Dunn's future NWSL playing status[125]
↑ The cash asset was alternative allocation money, allowing the club to use allocation money above the league's season cap. This was the first trade to involve alternative allocation money.
↑ $100,000 payable at the time of the trade in August 2020, and an additional $100,000 payable when Lavelle rejoined the NWSL from Manchester City, which she did in May 2021.
↑ $150,000 of 2022 allocation money, $25,000 of 2023 allocation money, and $15,000 in performance-based conditions.
↑ $150,000 in allocation money, and $25,000 in additional allocation money contingent on Kizer reaching performance-based goals with the Current.[139]
↑ $100,000 in allocation money, and $50,000 of additional allocation money if Sauerbrunn remains on the Thorns' squad in 2021.
↑ $120,000 in allocation money, and $10,000 of additional allocation money for each postseason match Dydasco plays for Houston, up to a total of $150,000.
↑ A three-team deal saw Bay FC acquire Ellie Jean from Gotham and $130,000 from Racing Louisville, in return for giving 2024 NWSL Expansion Draft immunity to Gotham; the cash from Racing Louisville was used to facilitate the trade between Bay FC and Gotham, and Racing Louisville (which already had expansion draft protection from Bay FC)[151] received Gotham's 2nd round (28th overall) and 3rd round (42nd overall) 2024 NWSL Draft picks in return.[152] Racing Louisville later acquired Jean in a different trade.[153]
↑ The transaction was a prerequisite to the NWSL completing a transfer of Lauren from Madrid CFF.[163]
↑ $70,000 allocation money and $30,000 "intra-league transfer fee"
↑ $50,000 allocation money and $50,000 transfer funds
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↑ Standard Player Agreement(PDF). Collective Bargaining Agreement between the National Women's Soccer League Players Association and National Women's Soccer League (Report). National Women's Soccer League. 31 January 2022. Retrieved 2 August 2023. (pages 49–65 of the PDF, separately numbered)
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Keira Walsh 
Barcelona 
Lindsey Horan 
Lyon 
Mayra Ramírez 
Kyra Cooney-Cross 
Hammarby 
Racheal Kundananji †
Ali Riley †
Bayern Munich 
