When a team is willing to pay a world-record amount for a footballer, you’d imagine that most people will have heard of her. That isn’t always the case, though, as proven by Chelsea’s decision to sign Mayra Ramírez for around £426,000, which was a world-record fee at the time. It isn’t so much that she hadn’t proven herself, but rather that she was mostly well-known in her native Colombia and in Spain where she was playing when Chelsea made the decision to sign her. Never the star, it was her key contributions to matches that made the Blues decide to take the plunge on a player who had a late start to her footballing life.
Who is Mayra Ramirez?
Born in the Colombian town of Sibaté on the 25th of March 1999, Mayra Tatiana Ramí Ramírez plays as a striker. It is, perhaps, something of an indication about the extent to which information about her isn’t all that known that we can’t even tell you about her parents or what she did when she was growing up. We do know that she didn’t start playing football professionally until she was 16-years-old, which is largely on account of the fact that the Liga Femenina, which is the women’s first division in Colombia, didn’t launch until 2017, meaning that all of the players who joined sides were teenagers when the league got underway.
Making it in Colombia
Mayra Ramírez began playing football at the youth level with the Colombian side Real Pasión in 2015. She did well enough to mean that in 2017 she was signed up to play for Fortaleza CEIF in Bogotá. Things really began to get going for her, though, when she was signed by Independiente Medellín in 2019, remaining there for a year. The move to Sporting de Huelva put her in a position where she could make a name for herself within the Spanish game, which in turn prompted Levante to bring her to the club in 2022. That was in the July of 2022, joining the side after having spent two seasons getting to know the Liga F at her former club.
It was during the Women’s World Cup that Ramírez really began to be noticed by the wider footballing world. The striker didn’t score for Colombia, but her work for the team meant that she caught the attention of the women’s game. Colombia, for their part, made it to the quarter-finals where the lost to eventual runners-up England, which also helped her come to the attention of English clubs in a more concerted manner. It was also noteworthy that her dynamism and the fact that she could play anywhere across the front line were both aspects of her game that the bigger clubs felt that they could make use of.
Signing for Chelsea
Having scored 20 goals in 34 league games for Levante, making it 32 goals in 95 games across four years in the Spanish top-flight, Ramírez was a player that Chelsea had been keeping tabs on for some time. When Sam Kerr, the Chelsea forward, suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury during a training session when the Blues went away for a warm weather training camp in the January of 2024, it meant that a replacement was needed. The club wasted no time in getting in touch with Levante to ask about the possibility of signing Ramírez, believing that she would be the right player to come in and make a difference for them.
Welcome to Chelsea, Mayra! 🏆🔵#HolaMayra https://t.co/wTjK6m84sp
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) January 26, 2024
Having sold Jessie Fleming to the National Women’s Soccer League side the Portland Thorns for around £250,000, Chelsea had some money available to be able to bring in the covet that they needed. Levante, though, weren’t about to let one of their star players go without getting their pound of flesh and negotiated hard with Chelsea over Ramírez. In the end the club is believed to have paid an up-front fee of €450,000, which is about £385,000, as well as another €50,000 in variable amounts depending on numerous targets being reached. It meant that the total fee would be about £426,000, which was a world-record fee at the time.
Getting to Know the WSL
Ramírez’s first appearance in the Women’s Super League came in the 67th minute, coming on as a substitute against Brighton & Hove Albion. Her first start came a few days later as the Blues took on Everton in the WSL. Having signed her on a four-and-a-half-year contract, it was clear that Chelsea were planning to use the striker in the long-term, whilst Emma Hayes’ decision to play her the first chance that she got meant that she was quickly blooded into life in the English game. Her first goal for her new club came in the Women’s FA Cup when she netted in the 4-0 win that Chelsea enjoyed over Leicester City.
In the 2023-2024 season, the Women’s Super League title went down to the final day, with Chelsea having to travel to Manchester United in order to secure their fifth successive top-flight honour. The game ended up being a relatively easy one for the Blues, with Ramírez getting her first goal for the club in a 6-0 romp. Not only did she score, she actually got a brace whilst also laying on two assists, which was just part of the reason why she was one of a number of Chelsea players nominated for the Ballon d’Or Femenin later that year, eventually coming 21st in the year that Barcelona’s Aitana Bonmatí won the crown.
Why Chelsea Broke the World-Record for her Signature
In the September of 2022, Barcelona paid Manchester City £400,000 in order to sign the England midfielder Keira Walsh. That was the world record for a female player at the time and remained in place for more than a year, only being broken when Chelsea decided to pay a total fee in the region of £426,000 for Remírez.
The obvious question that many supporters will ask is why it is that the Blues decided to go big on bringing her to the club. The injury to Sam Kerr definitely forced them to act sooner than they might have done otherwise, with Levante knowing that they were in something of a bind at the time.
The reality is, though, that she is something of a ‘fun’ signing that some saw as a ‘milestone in women’s football’. Chelsea lacked depth in attacking areas prior to her arrival, with the hope being that she could give Hayes’ replacement options with the front line.
Although she hasn’t ever really been the ‘star’ of any of the sides she’s played for, she has been a key aspect of virtually all of them. Described as a ‘relentless worker’, the manner in which she goes about her business is why she was signed by a Spanish side in the first place. Her style of play is the kind of thing that defenders hate to play against because she ‘doesn’t quit’.
Adapting to the More Physical English Game
The good news for Ramírez when she arrived at Chelsea was that numerous players spoke some Spanish, including the multi-lingual Lucy Bronze. The bad news was that she had to adapt to a more physical game, saying that she was ‘surprised’ when she arrived in the United Kingdom and discovered that the Women’s Super League was much more ‘physical’ and ‘tactical’ than La Liga F. In Spain, Barcelona won the title virtually every season, with the other teams simply competing over the ability to come second. Although it has been similar for Chelsea in the WSL, they only won it on goal difference in 2023-2024.
The physical nature of the game might be why she ended up missing periods of her first season in London. She missed the second-leg of the Champions League semi-final against Barcelona, for example, which Chelsea went into with a 1-0 lead only to lose it 2-0 at Stamford Bridge and be knocked out of the competition. It was the fact that she had to adapt to playing three games in a week that she initially struggled to get used to, with that not being something that she had experienced very often when playing in Spain. For a hard-working, physical, player like Ramírez, that can take its toll.