Caption,
Mayra Ramírez arrives at Chelsea from the Spanish club Levante.
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9 hours
Chelsea announced that they signed Mayra Ramírez for a record fee in the United Kingdom.
The F League team said the Colombian player will receive 450,000 euros (about US$490,000) and up to an additional 50,000 euros (about US$55,000) in complementary benefits.
The 24-year-old soccer player becomes the most expensive player in British history, surpassing the Dutch Jill Roord, who joined Manchester City from Wolfsburg for a transaction of more than 350,000 euros (about US$380,000) in 2023.
And if the add-on package is included in the sum, the agreement with Ramírez would be a new world record, surpassing the transfer of English midfielder Keira Walsh to Barcelona for 468,000 euros (about US$510,000) in 2022.
Ramírez, who stood out in her participation with the Colombian team during the last Women’s Soccer World Cup, was watching Chelsea’s victory against Real Madrid in the Champions League last Wednesday.
Now she is eligible to participate with her new team in that same league starting in the quarterfinals. Her signing comes after star forward Sam Kerr was ruled out for the rest of the season with an ACL injury.
Another Chelsea striker, Catarina Macario, who joined the team from Lyon last summer, is also recovering from an ACL injury that has kept her out of action since 2022.
A dream come true
Caption,
Mayra played five games in her first participation in a World Cup.
“I feel very honored to be part of Chelsea. Being part of such a big club is a dream come true, a dream I’ve had since I was a little girl,” Ramirez said.
The young athlete grew up in the municipality of Sibaté, near Bogotá, and began her career as a soccer player at the age of 14 on a local team.
In 2018 she was called up by the Colombian team and in 2019 she won the gold medal at the Pan American Games with her country’s team.
Thanks to these results he came to Spanish football in 2020, first to Huelva and then to Levante, where he scored six goals in seven games last season.
But perhaps her greatest recognition came thanks to her first participation in a Women’s World Cup.
In 2023, Mayra was a forward for the Colombian team that managed to reach the quarterfinals in Australia and New Zealand, defeating Germany along the way, which had not lost in the group stage of a World Cup for almost 30 years.
Now Ramirez joins the group of Latin American players who are making history in European football and with the record of having achieved the most expensive signing so far.
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