Why Alexia Putellas Joined London City Lionesses and What It Means for the WSL

What happened: Putellas leaves Barcelona for London City

London City Lionesses have signed two-time Ballon d’Or winner Alexia Putellas on a three-year contract after the Spain midfielder left Barcelona at the end of her 14-year spell at the club (BBC Sport, The Guardian). The 32-year-old was a free agent, having allowed her Barcelona contract to run out, and is believed to be earning a base salary of under £1 million a year, plus bonuses, making her the highest-paid player in the London City squad (BBC Sport). The deal was unveiled at an event at the W Hotel in New York’s Union Square alongside London City’s American billionaire owner Michele Kang (BBC Sport, NBC News).

Putellas told BBC Sport that she had wanted “something completely different” after 14 years at Barcelona and pointed specifically to the ownership structure of her new club. “First of all, there is no men’s club behind the women’s team here. It is a female owner at the club. I am in a new league — the most competitive league — that means I can push myself to my limits,” she said, adding: “I know a lot of people are saying it’s about money, but it is not.” The Guardian reports that Putellas was also motivated by the fact that London City are not a direct Champions League rival of Barcelona, which ruled out clubs such as Arsenal and Chelsea.

Who is Alexia Putellas?

Putellas is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in women’s football history. She joined Barcelona’s youth setup as a teenager and went on to spend 14 years in the first team, scoring a club-record 232 goals in 507 appearances — figures she will carry into English football (BBC Sport). The Athletic gives a slightly different figure, citing 234 goals in 513 games, and puts her Spain caps at a record 147; the precise totals diverge between sources and have not been independently reconciled in the reporting. She won 38 trophies at Barcelona, including 10 Liga F titles, 10 Spanish Cups and four Champions League crowns, and captained the side to the most recent of those European titles in her final season (BBC Sport, The Guardian).

At international level she won the World Cup with Spain in 2023 and was part of the side beaten by England in the Euro 2025 final (BBC Sport). She was ruled out of Euro 2022 on the eve of the tournament with an anterior cruciate ligament injury and returned the following season; the performances that followed earned her back-to-back Ballon d’Or trophies in 2021 and 2022 (BBC Sport). She is also a two-time FIFA Best women’s player, according to The Guardian.

Who are London City Lionesses and how did they get here?

London City are owned by Michele Kang, the American billionaire who bought the club in 2023 (The Athletic). According to The Athletic, three years ago the club were a second-tier, semi-professional side playing in front of around 400 supporters in Dartford, Kent, with a one-person marketing department. They won promotion to the Women’s Super League (WSL) at the end of the 2024-25 season and finished sixth in their debut top-flight campaign last term, averaging around 3,000 fans and recording a club-record attendance of 5,440 (The Athletic).

Kang also owns NWSL side Washington Spirit and OL Lyonnes, the most successful club in the history of European women’s football, plus a stake in Lyon’s men’s team (The Guardian, The Athletic). London City play their home matches at Hayes Lane in Bromley, south-east London, a ground that holds just over 6,000, fewer than 2,000 of them seated — a striking contrast with the 91,000-strong crowd Putellas played in front of at Camp Nou for a Barcelona Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid in 2022 (The Athletic). Al Jazeera describes London City as “the only solely female club in England’s top division.”

Part B — Why this transfer matters for the WSL

The Athletic argues that Putellas becomes “the first Ballon d’Or winner to play for an English club,” and frames the move as the strongest evidence yet that the WSL can attract the biggest names in the women’s game while they are still operating at peak level. The league has spent years trying to compete with the NWSL for global superstars: The Athletic points to Pernille Harder’s £250,000 move from Wolfsburg to Chelsea in 2020 as an earlier “watershed moment,” Arsenal’s capture of Alessia Russo from Manchester United in 2023, and Chelsea’s world-record £1.1 million fee for Naomi Girma from San Diego Wave in January 2025 — the first female footballer to break the £1 million barrier. Putellas’s transfer is free of a fee but, by The Athletic’s reckoning, raises the WSL’s prestige bar again.

The stakes for the WSL are concrete. According to The Athletic, England sit top of UEFA’s association coefficient rankings, ahead of Spain, Germany and France, but the league has historically lost marquee signings to the NWSL, which averages more than 10,000 fans per match and offers higher average salaries. That Boston Legacy — one of the NWSL’s expansion clubs — was reportedly one of the final two clubs in the running, alongside London City, suggests the WSL no longer loses every bidding war for a global superstar. Kang told BBC Sport: “I think it can help take the WSL to the next level… that is how you move the needle for women’s sport.”

The Kang project: ambition, money and an ageing squad

The Athletic is more sceptical about how London City will convert star power into long-term competitiveness. Putellas is 32, Mary Earps is 33, Mapi León is 30 — “short-term signings bought to win now,” in The Athletic’s words. The same analysis notes that Barcelona did not become the dominant force in European women’s football by signing established names; their rise was built on a deep academy and a coherent playing identity, not on marquee free transfers. That is a meaningful counterpoint to the bullish framing in London City’s own statement, which says Putellas’s arrival is “expected to drive significant growth in fan engagement and attendance” and to “strengthen the club’s academy and youth development programmes through world-class mentorship.”

There is also a financial reality that the sources hint at but do not fully disclose. BBC Sport puts Putellas’s base salary at under £1 million a year, but The Guardian reports London City “are said to have offered a far more lucrative contract than Barcelona,” suggesting that Putellas’s public denial that money was the primary driver is at least partly a presentational choice. Reuters’s reporting on the deal was unavailable to read at the time of writing, so figures cited here all come from BBC Sport, The Guardian and The Athletic and should be treated as estimates rather than confirmed numbers.

Where the reporting agrees — and where it diverges

The sources broadly agree on the core facts: three-year deal, free transfer, London City, WSL, Kang-owned, unveiled in New York. They diverge on three points. First, Putellas’s Barcelona goal tally: BBC Sport says 232 goals in 507 appearances, while The Athletic gives 234 goals in 513 games — a small but unexplained discrepancy. Second, the framing of her motivation: BBC Sport leans on Putellas’s own quotes about challenge and independence, while The Guardian emphasises the practical consideration of avoiding Barcelona’s Champions League rivals. Third, the tone of the analysis: BBC Sport and The Guardian are broadly celebratory, while The Athletic is more cautious, flagging the age profile of the squad and the lack of a clear youth-development pathway beyond Putellas’s own stated interest.

What to watch next

Several concrete developments will determine whether this transfer is a turning point for the WSL or simply an expensive headline. The Athletic notes that London City did not qualify for next season’s Champions League — Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City took England’s three places — so the first test is whether Putellas and Kang can break into the European places in 2026-27. The Guardian reports that León and Salma Paralluelo, both from Barcelona, are expected to follow Putellas to London City; if those deals go through, the squad’s ceiling rises sharply. Finally, The Athletic’s caveat about squad age is the long-term question: whether Kang balances this star-driven recruitment with the kind of academy investment that turned Barcelona into a European superpower, or whether London City become a high-spending project dependent on short-cycle signings.

For now, the immediate milestone is the opening of the 2026-27 WSL season in September, when Putellas will pull on a London City shirt in Bromley for the first time — a fixture that, on paper at least, is the most significant women’s club debut the English top flight has ever hosted.