Nigeria defender Ashleigh Plumptre has change into one probably the most excessive profile ladies’s gamers to hitch a Saudia Arabian aspect after signing for Al-Ittihad.
The 25-year-old joins the Saudi Girls’s Premier League workforce following three years with WSL aspect Leicester Metropolis. With many overtly homosexual gamers in ladies’s soccer and very restrictive rights for girls and homosexuality being unlawful in Saudi Arabia, the transfer and the nation’s rising curiosity in ladies’s soccer is controversial.
Plumptre has been recruited by the previous technical director of Championship aspect Lewes, Kelly Lindsey, who’s now head supervisor of the Saudi Arabian aspect. Lindsey is a former US worldwide who has beforehand been head coach of the Afghanistan ladies’s nationwide workforce and Morocco ladies’s nationwide workforce.
Her assistant, Myles Smith, spent six years working in West Ham Girls’s arrange and 9 months as a scout for Manchester United Girls and the workforce’s goalkeeping coach, Dan Smith, joined from newly promoted Bristol Metropolis.
Plumptre posted on X (previously Twitter) that she was “grateful to have signed for Al-Ittihad.” She added: “I’m excited to begin this journey alongside some unimaginable human beings. My journey of moving into extra of myself continues … It’s greater than soccer.”
Plumptre impressed for Nigeria on the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, with the African aspect narrowly lacking out on a spot within the quarter-finals, shedding to England on penalties after the sport was goalless after 120 minutes.
The defender represented England at Underneath-15, Underneath-17, Underneath-19 and Underneath-23 ranges however selected to signify Nigeria at senior stage, whom she qualifies to play for by means of her paternal grandfather.
Plumptre follows Venezuela’s Oriana Altuve, fellow Nigerian Rita Chikwelu and Sweden’s Nor Mustafa into the league for its second season.
after publication promotion
Al-Ittihad completed fifth within the eight-team league’s first season, with 5 wins and 6 attracts from 14 video games. The brand new season kicks off on 13 October. The 30-team second tier, which is made up of six regional teams, will see three groups promoted to the highest flight following a knockout competitors of the winners of every area and one relegated from it.
The winners of the highest flight will gather SR2million (£427,457).
