Orlando Delight have accomplished a deal to signal Zambia ahead Barbra Banda for the second-highest switch charge in ladies’s soccer.
Recruited from Chinese language Tremendous League aspect Shanghai Shengli for $740,000 (£582,128), Banda has signed a four-year contract with the NWSL aspect. The worth tag makes her the second most costly participant within the historical past of ladies’s soccer, following Bay FC’s recruitment of Banda’s worldwide teammate Racheal Kundananji from Liga F aspect Madrid CFF for $787,600 in February.
“The Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League is without doubt one of the best and strongest leagues on the planet so it’s very humbling to get an opportunity to play in it,” Banda stated. “Since my first assembly with the membership and the final supervisor I knew this was a membership I needed to affix. I can’t wait to fulfill my new teammates and begin working with them. I hope to assist the workforce in my small capability to do nice issues and win quite a lot of trophies collectively.”
Banda scored 41 objectives in 51 video games for Shanghai Shengli and received the golden boot in her first season on the membership. The forward then burst onto the world stage on the Tokyo Olympics, scoring back-to-back hat methods towards the Netherlands and China.
In 2022 Banda scored 10 objectives to complete high scorer as Zambia received the Cosafa Ladies’s Championship. Within the run as much as the 2023 World Cup she netted twice, both aspect of a Kundananji purpose, as Zambia earned an exhilarating 3-2 win over Germany. On the event itself Banda scored Zambia’s second of their closing group sport, a 3-1 win over Costa Rica, which was their first World Cup win.
“It has all the time been our imaginative and prescient to construct the Orlando Delight into an NWSL Championship contender and we consider funding on the planet’s greatest gamers is a prerequisite for fulfillment,” stated the Orlando Delight proprietor and chairman, Mark Wilf.
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Orlando Delight vice-president of soccer operations and common supervisor, Haley Carter, added: “Barbra is a natural-born purpose scorer and one of the vital bodily imposing forwards on the planet. Turning solely 24 years previous this month we have now each confidence she will likely be an affect participant in our assault for years to come back. We’re excited to assist her develop and develop upon the varied layers of her sport and can’t wait to see her in purple.”
