Two things happened to Women's Super League clubs this week that look unrelated and are not. Manchester City sold Kerolin to Barcelona for the largest fee a WSL club has ever received, in circumstances they did not choose. Manchester United replaced their manager of five years and, in the same breath, signalled that they intend to stop competing in the market that produced that fee. Both are stories about what the league now costs to win.
The record, and how it was forced
Barcelona announced the signing of the 26-year-old Brazil forward on Tuesday. City did not refer to it until Thursday evening, more than 48 hours later, when they confirmed a WSL record fee. The deal is worth an initial €1.2m, around £1m, and could rise with add-ons to roughly £1.25m, though that has not been officially confirmed. It breaks the record set by Olivia Smith's sale from Liverpool to Arsenal last summer, and it required Barcelona to abandon their own policy: they had never before paid more than £500,000 for a player.
The delay in City's acknowledgement is explained by what preceded it. Kerolin did not report back for pre-season training in July, which began late in the month, before her transfer had been agreed. Staff and players were taken aback by her absence from fitness testing, and several were disappointed by what they read as an attempt to force the move. She had been thought to be on good terms with the squad and did not say goodbye in person. Standoffs of this kind are familiar in the men's game and comparatively rare in the women's.