Neel Shelat assesses how a club in Mexico is making the most of a relatively untapped market for talent
Sub-Saharan Africa is right up there with the most promising and potential-filled markets in world football, certainly in terms of cost versus value. Scores of clubs from around the world in the men’s game have been well aware of and investing in the market for decades now, but the women’s game has been slower to catch up for various reasons. The observation holds entirely true in both cases, so this region represents a greater opportunity for women’s teams.
A select few clubs from various parts of the world have consistently recruited from sub-Saharan Africa and reaped rich rewards, often also becoming pathways for players who go on to reach the very highest levels of the game. In most leagues, though, there exists a pretty big opening for teams to replicate something along the lines of what FC Juárez have done.
Need for pathways from the growing sub-Saharan market
A number of players from sub-Saharan Africa have certainly done their part to prove their mettle on the world stage. Among them are current BBC Women’s Footballer of the Year Barbra Banda, the first recipient of that award Asisat Oshoala, reigning NWSL Player of the Year Temwa Chawinga and her equally talented sister Tabitha, and Onome Ebi, the first African player to appear at six different World Cups.
Despite their extremely high levels of talent, most of those players did not enjoy straightforward or direct paths to the top levels of the game. Banda, for example, broke out in Zambia and moved to Logroño (one of the aforementioned clubs who have consistently recruited from sub-Saharan Africa) at the age of 18, thus becoming the first Zambian woman to play in Europe. After impressing in Spain for two seasons, she moved to Shanghai Shengli in 2020. She continued to rip defences apart in China, eventually earning a move to the Orlando Pride in 2024 for what then was the second-highest transfer fee in women’s football history. She has certainly proven herself to be worth the investment, having firmly established herself as one of the very best players in the world right now.
Temwa Chawinga also moved to America from China, but she first left her homeland of Malawi for Sweden with a move to Swedish side Kvarnsvedens IK. After scoring close to a goal a game in over 50 appearances, she moved to Wuhan Jiangda, where she kept up her conversion rate for four seasons! She hasn’t been doing half-badly in the NWSL either as she became the first player to score 20 goals in a single season in her debut campaign last year. Her sister, now at Lyon following a spell at Inter, also went from Malawi to Sweden to China.
Evidently, some Chinese clubs have been good launchpads for sub-Saharan talents in recent years. There are barely a handful of other pathways to the top besides them, including Kazakh side BIIK Kazgurt (who have signed around 20 players from the region since 2010), Logroño, and a few Scandinavian and Turkish teams. All things considered (including domestic challenges), then, it should be easy to see why success stories like those of Banda and the Chawingas are few and far between relative to the scale and population of sub-Saharan Africa. Even among the successful bunch of players who have made it to their national teams, a significant number do not play in fully professional teams and leagues.
As the below charts depict, at least half of the squads of all but two of the top eight sub-Saharan women’s national teams are comprised of players plying their trade in the domestic leagues (of which all but South Africa’s SAFA Women’s League are not fully professional). Nigeria are the only team who call upon a majority of their players from the top six leagues, while Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal have just two players altogether in those leagues.
The growing professionalisation of women’s football around the world including in Africa should surely lead to the creation of more pathways in the coming years. The recent inception of the CAF Women’s Champions League has also proven to be a great move as it gives some domestically-based players an invaluable platform to showcase the talents on a stage that the world watches. Many sub-Saharan clubs have done well, including two-time winners Mamelodi Sundowns and defending champions TP Mazembe among eight clubs from the region to have reached the knockouts. Some major transfers have also been made on the back of the tournament’s editions, such as Shadia Nankya’s recent move to the Washington Spirit to become the first Ugandan woman to sign for a top-tier American club. With growing platforms for sub-Saharan talents, more pathways should surely emerge.
An opportunity for FC Juárez to gain an edge over domestic rivals
For many clubs around the world, the sub-Saharan market presents a golden opportunity to gain an edge over their rivals just as FC Juárez have done in the last few years. Relative newcomers in Mexican football, they only celebrated their 10th birthday as a club earlier this year. They entered Liga MX Femenil in 2019 by taking the place of Lobos BUAP, though they did not enjoy a particularly good time in early seasons as they bounced around between the bottom two places of the standings. This was not a particularly surprising outcome given their lack of historical stature as well as relatively low investment and financial capacity compared to rivals.
Evidently, Juárez did not stand much of a chance of seriously competing in a league solely comprised of domestic players at the time of their joining. However, in 2021, Liga MX Femenil opened itself up to foreign players. Bravas did not alter the composition of their squad to include any foreigners at the time and remained at the very bottom of the standings, but things changed in the following season.
Juárez’s first two foreign signings were both players from sub-Saharan Africa who made a telling impact at either end of the field. The first was Tanzanian centre back Julitha Singano, who quickly established herself as one of the very best defenders in the league, as we can see through TransferLab’s Time Machine feature.
Jermaine Seoposenwe’s arrival might not have been planned throughout the summer as she had agreed a pre-contract with Bordeaux, but the French club’s struggles presented Juárez with an opportunity they took with both hands. The South African attacker’s well-roundedness helped revolutionise Bravas’ attack as she herself scored seven goals while two of her teammates his double digits. She had only signed a season-long contract and moved on to Monterrey thereafter, going on to impress even further.
Of course, it would be an oversimplification to say that these two signings alone set Juárez on the path to success, but they certainly played a big part. The club reached the playoffs for the very first time in the 2022/23 Clausura and have hardly looked back since.
Having seen the potential and impact of sub-Saharan talents first-hand, Bravas unsurprisingly continued to recruit such players. In fact, they are responsible for bringing in around half the players from the region to have played in Liga MX Femenil to date.
Arguably their best signing to date was Prisca Chilufya. The Zambian winger joined in the summer of 2023 and instantly stood out as one of the best attackers in the division. She certainly was the key player in a team that looked to sit back and absorb a good deal of pressure, as her dribbling and carrying down the flank made her an excellent outlet, while she also went on to deal damage in the final third.
It did not take long for others to take notice of the young winger’s talent, so she earned a move to the Orlando Pride for an undisclosed fee in early 2025.
Besides Chilufya, Grace Asantewaa was one of Juárez’s summer signings in 2023. She did a great job as a well-rounded midfielder, thus getting close to 30 appearances that season. The Ghanaian international continued to impress in a more advanced role last term, breaking into double digits for goals to end up as the club’s joint top-scorer.
Tanzanian national team captain Opah Clement is the latest sub-Saharan player to join FC Juárez at the time of writing having come in after Chilufya’s departure as the club had hit the foreign player cap of five. She got little playing time in the 2025 Clausura, but she should be one to watch in 2025/26.
It is worth noting that most of these players were not signed from a sub-Saharan club but rather came via one of the aforementioned pathways. Singano was the only one who moved directly from Africa, specifically from Tanzanian champions Simba Queens. As for the others, Chilufya moved via BIIK-Kazygurt and Türkiye, Seoposenwe played for a number of European clubs including Real Betis and Braga (having also previously appeared for a college team in the United States), Asantewaa moved from Logroño to Betis before coming to Mexico and Clement spent time in Türkiye and China after leaving Simba Queens.
Now armed with a very successful track record, Juárez could well look to go straight to the source and can present a very convincing case to the players as well. The emergence of Liga MX Femenil as an attractive market is yet another plus point, so they seem very well set to continue to succeed thanks in no small part to their status as a hub for sub-Saharan talent.
Header image IMAGO / ZUMA Press Wire / Ariana Ruiz
