Alexia Putellas, two-time Ballon d'Or winner, World Cup champion, face of a Barcelona dynasty — and now a London City Lionesses player earning around £1m a year in the second city of English football, playing out of a 5,400-capacity ground in Bromley. That contrast tells you everything about what Michele Kang is building, and everything about why it might not be as straightforward as the transfer announcements suggest.
In two years, Kang has turned a Championship club into a genuine WSL contender. From the same Barcelona side that won last season's Women's Champions League, London City have signed Putellas, Mapi Leon, and Jana Fernandez. From sister club OL Lyonnes, they've brought in Kadidiatou Diani, Delphine Cascarino, and Danielle van de Donk. Mary Earps has arrived from PSG. A £3m Nike shirt deal — reportedly worth more than some Premier League front-of-shirt sponsorships — is signed. The Kynisca group's $50m innovation hub, focused on female athlete health, is operational. A state-of-the-art training facility is being built in Kent.
On paper, London City have done everything right.
The model is legitimate — but so are the complications
Kang's approach isn't vanity project spending. She made her money in healthcare technology and sees women's sport as genuinely undervalued. Her $30m donation to US Soccer and a $4m gift to USA Rugby — the latter written hours after watching the US women's sevens win bronze in Paris — frame the broader picture. This is someone with a philosophy, not just a chequebook.
The multi-club structure, linking London City with Lyonnes and Washington Spirit under the Kynisca banner, gives the club access to shared research, training methods, and talent pipelines that no other WSL side can match. When Lyonnes also signed Ingrid Engen and Salma Paralluelo from Barcelona on free transfers, and Washington Spirit hired then lost former Barca coach Jonatan Giraldez to Lyonnes, Barcelona goalkeeper Cata Coll's post-Champions League dig — "money isn't everything" — started to feel less like a throwaway line and more like genuine frustration.
But UEFA's multi-club ownership regulations are a real ceiling. Both London City and Lyonnes want to compete in the Women's Champions League. UEFA's rules explicitly prohibit any individual or group from having "control or influence" over more than one club in the same competition. Workarounds exist in the men's game — see Brighton and Hearts in this season's Conference League — but UEFA's head of women's football, Nadine Kessler, was clear earlier this year that she intends to "preserve the sporting integrity" of the women's game. That's not a soft warning.
The financial reality inside the WSL
London City's last reported accounts showed a £10.6m loss against £900,000 in revenue. That's not a quirky footnote — it's the structural challenge at the core of Kang's project. WSL salary cap rules allow clubs to spend 80 per cent of women's football revenues plus up to £4m from owners. Arsenal and Chelsea, playing home games at the Emirates and Stamford Bridge, have revenue bases that dwarf London City's. Hayes Lane in Bromley generates a fraction of what those venues pull in on matchday.
To close that gap, London City need supporters — and that's where the most uncertain bet of all sits. They're competing for fans in a city where Chelsea won the WSL last season and Arsenal remain the default choice for women's football supporters who came up through the game's growth years. Breaking that loyalty, with no men's club to funnel supporters from, is a different kind of challenge than signing a Ballon d'Or winner.
Putellas and Earps have the profile to shift things. Whether they shift enough, and fast enough to build the revenue base that makes London City's model self-sustaining, is the question Kang hasn't answered yet. She's built it. Whether they come is another matter entirely.
