Putellas provides mindset change as London City bid to upstage champions

As Martin Semmens, the London City Lionesses chief executive, sits down is his office he looks like the cat that got the cream. He says he has just learned that the club’s Instagram page has generated 34m hits since Alexia Putellas won the Ballon d’Or on Monday evening, and it is only Thursday afternoon. On Sunday, two clubs with seven of the top 30 players in the Ballon d’Or rankings will go head-to-head when Manchester City visit Hayes Lane, Bromley. It is, Semmens, says, “awesome for the WSL”.

From the outside, it can feel slightly surreal. The independent women’s club, owned by the businesswoman Michele Kang, are third in the top flight, two and a half years after finishing eighth in tier two, and Semmens believes signing the world’s best player has helped changed everybody at the club’s mindset.

“Her impact on our commercial business is extraordinary,” he says. “From a leadership point of view, she allows us to start thinking about really winning. The environment today feels like it can beat Man City on Sunday and that’s a lot down to her.”

He acknowledges that Putellas, a World Cup winner with Spain and four-time European champion with Barcelona, and her brand – she has more Instagram followers (3.7m) than a men’s club the size of Porto, for example – were pivotal in helping the club secure what they claim is the largest front-of-shirt sponsorship deal in the women’s game, with Nike. The club say it is worth more than the new NWSL franchise Atlanta’s sponsorship of $4m (£3m) a year.

“It’s insanely big,” Semmens says. “Our view on how to run this business, rightly or wrongly, was to invest first, invest in the everything to make it awesome, and then the commercial deal will be big. The other way, of: ‘Let’s sit back, let’s grow a fanbase, let’s wait for the money to come’ – we don’t have the patience for that. Michele’s vision was: ‘I’m going to invest now to prove that we can bring these deals in.’ That deal allows us to kick forward, it allows us to keep investing in players and infrastructure, because without it, we’re just burning Michele’s money, which is not the plan.”

Even with Kang’s money, signing a player who had been loyal to Barcelona for 14 years was never going to be straightforward. Semmens, the former Southampton chief executive, says: “The conversation went: ‘Wait until I’ve finished winning a Champions League with Barcelona, and then we’ll have a conversation,’ which we loved and we respected, but we always had a feeling she would come.

“I think she had bought into four or five significant things. One, that we are independent, we’re a women’s-first environment. [Two] there’s a lot of power in coming to London, as a city. The WSL is important – people see WSL as the growth brand. And, after that, Michele had an unbelievably massive impact [on Putellas’s decision]. Alexia said to me: ‘Well, she said she was going to do all this stuff and she’s done it. So I want to be part of that.’ And then also, it allows her to have a legacy in the future – she will grow this club to a point where she’s creating a pathway for the next young players to come through in London.”

There are questions facing the club in relation to how much they have been spending and eyebrows were raised – to put it mildly – around the rest of the league when London City recorded an operating loss of more than 10 times their revenue for the 2024-25 season, when they won promotion as second-tier champions. Since then, salary cap rules have been introduced in the WSL, stating no club’s player wage bill can exceed the following figures combined: 80% of revenue, plus up to £4m or a further 25% of revenue (whichever is higher).

Last season, when London City finished sixth, the league’s handbook said no punishments would be dished out for any breaches of that cap for that campaign only. From this term, points deductions could apply, which is one reason why it was imperative to increase commercial revenues. But were they within the rules last term?

“We are 100% within the rules, we will always be,” Semmens says. “It’s so important to Michele.” He says the “goal of the business” is to be profitable within five years and likens last year’s investments to a “start up fund”: “The [salary cap] rules were set up with a clear understanding that they wouldn’t come until this year. The handbook is 100% clear. We want to see investment coming into the women’s game. Anything that kind of restricts positive and good investment obviously worries [me] but there is a need for rules and we’re 100% fine with that. We are super-transparent. We can reassure the fans that we are financially viable, sustainable, and we’ve made serious investments over the last two years to be profitable and successful in the future.”

Another question facing the club, particularly given their league position, is whether they would be eligible to compete in the Women’s Champions League, given Kang also owns the record eight-time European champions OL Lyonnes in France. Semmens says in reference to Uefa’s multi-club ownership rules: “One hundred per cent, it can be resolved. We will continue to argue the case that you should be able to [invest into multiple clubs] to see the women’s game accelerated.

“It’s not about exchanging players like the men’s game. It’s not about one club dominating and the other being a feeder club. It’s a different model but we fully understand and respect the rules. Therefore, we will set ourselves up in a way where we’re allowed to and can compete in Europe together. There are clear rules, clear precedents in the men’s game and clear things you can do to allow both teams to flourish. We’re fully aware of that and we’ll comply with the rules.”

London City are three points off Chelsea and Manchester City, and Semmens says the aim is to “build a squad that is consistently in the top three”. He is looking forward to Sunday. “This is probably the No 1 game in the women’s game in the world this weekend,” he says. “That’s what we want to be: on the map.”