We also talked with the lead on the ownership group and NWSL Commissioner Jessica Bermann for the newly awarded NWSL expansion franchise in Denver. In addition, we have an update to a recent column on the Saudi Arabia Women’s League as Orlando Pride has transferred Brazilian international Adriana to Al Qadsiah FC for a club record transfer fee.
2025 Russian Superliga Women Update
Russia has 70 imports in their Superliga women’s league for the 2025 season, with Kaylan Williams—who we featured in 2023 and is now in her fifth season in the league and third with Dinamo Moscow—as the only American (see: The Week in Women's Football: Kaylan Williams exclusive - a USA star playing for Dinamo Moscow - Tribal Football). We are arranging a catch-up interview with Kaylan Williams, which we will present over the next few weeks. Most of the imports in the league are from Eastern Europe—with 39% from Belarus alone—with four from CONCACAF nations (we discussed Priscilla Chinchilla’s move to Moscow from Mexico last month, see: The Week in Women's Football: Liga MX season review - top 7 in focus - TribalFootball.com) and four from a quartet of African nations.
Total Imports in Russian Superliga for the 2025 season
Belarus 27
Serbia 10
Armenia 6
Azerbaijan 4
Bosnia & Herzegovina 3
Brazil 2
Costa Rica 2
Kazakhstan 2
Ukraine 2
Cameroon 1
Gambia 1
Haiti 1
Kyrgyz Republic 1
Moldova 1
Montenegro 1
Nigeria 1
Poland 1
Slovenia 1
Uganda 1
U.S. 1
Uzbekistan 1
Below we look at each team’s imports, focusing on new signings.
Zenit St. Petersburg
Zenit St. Petersburg has eight imports for the 2025 season: Azerbaijan (1), Belarus (1), Costa Rica (2), Brazil (1), Haiti (1), Nigeria (1) and Poland (1).
Midfielder Priscilla Chinchilla (23) of Costa Rica scored five goals in 18 matches in 2024. She won her second European club title in 2024 in Russia after winning one in Scotland in 2022-23 with Glasgow City, after being named the Professional Footballers Association Player of the Year the previous season.
Forward Catalina Estrada (26) of Costa Rica has played at home, in Mexico with Cruz Azul and won a league title last season with Zenit.
Forward Shwendesky ‘Kiki’ Joseph (27) is a full international for Haiti and won her third consecutive league title with Zenit in 2024, scoring seven goals in 24 games. She was on Haiti’s WWC Finals debut side in 2023 in Australia/New Zealand.
Forward Maryann Ezenagu (23) of Nigeria is now in her second season with Zenit. She has been capped at the U-17 level by Nigeria.
Midfielder Ana Beatriz Gomes Lopes or ‘Bia’ (21) of Brazil moved to St. Petersburg from Internacional of Porto Alegre in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in the southeastern portion of the country. She was with the side when they won State Championships in 2021 and 2022 and won a South American U-20 title with Brazil in 2022 in Chile.
CSKA Moscow
The traditional Army club has two imports each from Serbia and one each from Cameroon, Kazakhstan and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Forward Sofija Krajsumovic (22) is a Bosnia and Herzegovina international and the 2025 campaign will be her second season with CSKA; last season she scored once in 11 matches (with five starts). She scores at a rate of one goal in every two international matches. We are seeing more B&H internationals move abroad to play for clubs, particularly in the U.S., Australia, Turkey, Hungary, Italy and even in Saudi Arabia (see our column last month: The Week in Women's Football: Examining third season of Saudi Arabia Premier League - TribalFootball.com).
Forward Gabrielle Onguene (35) of Cameroon joined Rossiyanka in 2015 and first came to the country in 2012 to play in Kaliningrad; she won three league titles with Rossiyanka and CSKA. She scored 5 goals this year after scoring 15 last season; 2024 was her eighth season with CSKA.
Note: Forward Tatiana Ewodo Ekogo (27) of Cameroon is a full international and had been in Russia since 2019. The 2024 season was her second season with CSKA but is not on the club’s roster for 2025.
Spartak Moscow
Spartak Moscow’s six imports hail from: Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia (2) and Slovenia
Defender Svetlana Karagezyan (20) of Armenia is a full international and has played club ball in Russia with Rubin Kazan and FK Chertanovo Moscow.
Defender Lidija Kulis (32) is a full international for Bosnia-Herzegovina and joined Spartak Moscow last season from Thor of Iceland. She has played in the past with Milan in Italy and Turbine Potsdam in Germany, along with short spells at Cologne in Germany and Linkoping in Sweden
Forward Lara Ivanusa (28) is a Slovenian international who has won league titles in Hungary with Ferencvaros (two), at home with ZNK Olimpia Ljubljana (two) and Glasgow City (one) in Scotland. She has also played in Italy, Iceland, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates.
Lokomotiv Moscow
Lokomotiv Moscow has nine imports from Belarus (2), Serbia (2), Brazil (1), Gambia (1), and Krygyz Republic (1).
Goalkeeper Angelina Gaier (26) of Kyrgyz Republic played nine games in her first season in Russia with Lokomotiv, winning the Women’s Cup in 2024. She moved from BIIK Kazygurt in Kazakhstan, where she won five league titles from 2019-2023.
Ola Buwaro (23) of Gambia played in 10 games this season for Lokomotiv. She played in 2023 in China’s Women’s Second Division league with Guangxi Pingguo Beinong FC. She is a full international for Gambia’s national team. She won a league title at home with Red Scorpions FC during the 2022/23 Gambia FF Women’s League Division 1, leading the team in scoring with 10 as they finished the season undefeated. She was an African regional level and Commonwealth Games track athlete growing up.
Layssa Oliveira dos Santos (22) of Brazil is in her second season with the Railwaymen in Moscow, scoring 11 goals last season and 12 goals in 2024. She won a CONMEBOL U-20 championship with Brazil in Chile in 2022.
Dinamo Moscow
Dinamo Moscow has eight imports: Belarus (3), Serbia (2), Montenegro (1), Uganda (1) and the U.S. (1).
Forward Kaylan Williams (26) of the U.S. scored 7 goals in 23 matches last season. She has extended her contract with Dinamo by another year and TribalFootball.com will present an interview with her in the upcoming weeks.
Forward Fauzia Najjemba (21) of Uganda is a full international and has also played in Kazakhstan with BIIK Shymkent and Kampala Queens at home in Uganda. In two seasons with Dinamo Moscow, she has scored nine goals in 32 matches (31 starts). In 2023, she won a league title in Kazakhstan with BIIK.
Zvezda Perm
Zvezda Perm had eight imports on their roster: Belarus (6), Moldova (1) and Uzbekistan (1).
Defender Anastasia Sivolobova (26) of Moldova is a new signing for Perm from ZNK Mura Nona at home. She is a full international with over 30 caps and has also played club football in Portugal.
Midfielder Dilrabo Asadova (28) is a full international for Uzbekistan and played in eight matches in 2024 with Perm.
Note: Goalkeeper Iryna Zvarych (41) of Ukraine only played in one match in 2024, her tenth season with Perm, and was not on the team’s roster for 2025. In her long career, she has won ten league championships, three with Lehenda Chernihiv in Ukraine, four with Rossiyanka in Russia, two with Zvezda Perm in Russia and one with Fortuna Hjorring in Denmark. She has also played in France with Juvisy (now Paris FC) and Montpellier and in Azerbaijan. She earned 30 full caps with Ukraine’s WNT.
Krasnodar
Krasnodar has two imports, one from Armenia and one from Azerbaijan.
Defender Milana Vartanyan (21) is a full international with Armenia and is in her third season with the club, but has only played in 16 games during that time—with one appearance for 5 minutes in 2024.
Forward Sevinc Cefarzade (30) is a full international with Azerbaijan. She played with Eastern Flames in Saudi Arabia in 2023-24 and returned to Krasnodar for the balance of the 2024 season. She had played with Krasnodar for the three previous seasons (2021-2023). She has played in Russia since 2017.
Rostov
Rostov-on-Don’s team has four imports, two each from Armenia and Belarus.
Defender Liana Ghazaryan (24) is a full international for Armenia and played in 18 matches in her first season with Rostov. She also played in Lithuania with Zalgiris Vilnius and at FC Hayasa at home in Gyumri, Armenia.
Midfielder Anna Dallakyan (23) is another Armenian international and, in her first season in the Russian league, scoring three goals in 20 matches in 2024. She also played in Lithuania with Zalgiris Vilnius and at FK Saned Joniskis and FC Hayasa at home.
Note: No longer on the roster for the 2025 season is midfielder Pauline Agbotsu (24) of Liberia, who moved to Rostov for the 2024 season from Okzhetpes of Kazakhstan; she also played with BIIK Shymkent in Kazakhstan. She played at home with Determine Girls.
Chertanovo
Chertanovo’s roster is comprised entirely of all-Russian nationals.
Yenisey Krasnoyarsk
Yenisey Krasnoyarsk has four imports: three from Belarus and one from Kazakhstan.
Ryazan
Ryazan utilizes a team entirely comprised of Russian nations except for three imports from Belarus and one from Armenia.
Defender Tatiana Dolmatova (32) was born in Russia but is a full international for Armenia. She played all 24 games (all starts) for Ryazan in 2024, her third season with the club.
Krylya Sovetov Samara
Krylya Sovetov has seven imports: two each from Belarus and Serbia and one each from Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Ukraine.
Goalkeeper Alina Poghosyan (21) is an Armenian WNT international and 2025 will be her second season in Samara.
Defender Nikolina Milovic (24) is a Bosnia-Herzegovina international and is in her second season with the Samara club. She played for Red Star Beograd in Serbia last fall in the UEFA WCL.
Defender Aliona Kovtun (32) is a former Ukrainian youth international and started the 2024 season with Zvezda Perm (her fifth season) but joined Krylya Sovetov in the off season. She won a Polish league title in 2019-20 with Gornik Leczna and two Ukrainian league titles with Zhytlobud-1 of Kharkiv.
Note: Forward Siomala Mapepa (22) was on Zambia’s 2023 WWC Finals debut side; she scored two goals in eight games in her first season in Russia in 2024 but is not on Samara’s roster for the 2025 season.
FK Rubin Kazan
Bottom side Rubin Kazan has four imports from Belarus, two from Azerbaijan and one from Ukraine.
Midfielder Taisiia Nesterenko (34) of Ukraine is in her third season with Rubin Kazan and has won six league titles at home with Zhytlobud-1.
Defend Alina Dorofeyeva (26) is also a native of Russian who plays for Azerbaijan after playing for Russia at the U-19 level; she played for Yenisey for eight seasons before joining Kazan for 2025.
Midfielder Diana Mammadova (26) was born in Russia but plays internationally for Azerbaijan. She played six seasons for Yenisey and moved to Rubin Kazan for the 2025 season.
Note: Forward Oksanna Pizlova (24) is a senior Armenian international and 2024 was her first season in Russia. She previously played two seasons with Okzhetpes in Kazakhstan and Alashkert at home. She played in 19 matches this season with Kazan but was not on the club’s roster for 2025.
2024 Russian League Season Overview
For the 2024 women’s league season in Russia, Zenit St. Petersburg went through the season undefeated, with a 22-2-0 record for 68 points. CSKA Moscow was second on a 20-2-2 record for 62 points. They lost to Zenit 1-0 away in the last game of the season and fell surprisingly to Krasnador 1-0 at home four games before, which was a key barrier in their title bid.
Spartak Moscow and Lokomotiv Moscow finished tied for third on 50 points and Dinamo Moscow was fifth on 41 points. At the bottom of the table were Krylva Sovetov (18 points) in 12th place and Rubin Kazan (8 points) for 13th.
For the leading scorers, Gabriela Grywinska (28) of Poland has played with Zenit since 2021, winning titles in her last three campaigns. She won a UEFA U-17 title in 2012-13 in Switzerland. She is a full Polish international. She won the Golden Boot with 19 goals, followed by Brazilian Layssa of Lokomotiv Moscow and Ekaterina Pantyukhina (31) of Zenit, both with 12. Pantyukhina has won six league Russian titles (three with Zenit and three with Zvezda Perm) and has 30 caps (with 9 goals) with Russia’s WNT.
Denver officially in as the NWSL’s 16th franchise
In January 2025, Denver, Colorado was officially awarded a franchise in the NWSL for the 2026 season (along with Boston) after being selected over Cleveland and Cincinnati for the spot. The expansion fee was $110 million, a record for the league. At the time of award, the Denver group had received 2,000 season ticket deposits ($30 per ticket) and this rose to 5,000 a week later.
Denver’s ownership group is led by finance executive Rob Cohen, who had previously been involved in an unsuccessful bid for a WNBA franchise for the city. Cohen founded the Denver Sports Commission in 2001 to bring major sporting events to the city. He is a founding member of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Foundation and was part of the push for Denver to host the 2030 Olympic Games. These city, regional and state sports commissions are quite adept on combining political, business and sports organizations in a number of bids for national and international sporting events.
He had also explored becoming a minority investor in the soccer community-owned USL W-League Minnesota Aurora, which initially had expressed interest in the 16th NWSL expansion franchise, but was not among the three finalists for the spot. Cohen could not be involved in multiple NWSL franchises as an owner at the same time and chose the Denver effort.
Cohen is joined on the ownership side by Project Level, a subsidiary of Ariel Investments and led by Chairwoman Mellody Hobson—one of the first Black NFL owners with the Denver Broncos, a shareholder in baseball’s Chicago White Sox and League One Volleyball—who will be the team’s alternate governor on the NWSL Board of Governors. Other owners include former Washington Commanders president Jason Wright, Molly Coors (of the Coors Beer—now Molson Coors beverage company) among others. The city had initially explored both the NWSL and new USL Super League before quickly deciding that the NWSL had more potential and a better investment, even though the expansion fee cost was much higher.
TribalFootball.com participated in a media call with Denver’s group lead owner Rob Cohen and NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman on January 30 to discuss the award and the group’s plans moving forward.
Cohen listed the key aspects that helped Denver win the bidding process: “The league was very clear that they (the NWSL) were going to pick the city based on the market, based on the ownership group, based on the facility plan, and, obviously, based on the expansion fee. So, we were just focused on getting the work done and figured the rest would take care of itself at the right time.”
The team will play in a temporary location before building its own soccer stadium and a dedicated training center. Cohen and his group has not identified where they would play yet but said that their permanent stadium would be “world class” and dedicated to the women’s team and located in a central location that was accessible by mass transit in the Denver area.
Cohen explained that the franchise was not just focused on the Denver Metropolitan Area but also had a Rocky Mountain regional focus: “One of the benefits of our bid, our proposal and our team is the geographic region of our team because the scope is so large…We had a lot of studies, looked at other teams (baseball, football, basketball and hockey teams all are based in Denver at the major league level) in the area and how (they reach out to) Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming and the entire Rocky Mountain Region. We plan on marketing to that entire community to try to make this their local regional team (as well as Denver’s).
TribalFootball.com asked Cohen two questions, one about their corporate sponsorship marketing plans—which Commissioner Jessica Berman also chimed in on—and on the best practices for a women’s football team that they learned through their due diligence during the bidding process.
On the first issue, Cohen said: “As part of our bid we wanted to go test the corporate market place to make sure that the assumptions that we were making were accurate. We have had amazing corporate support in terms of the bid, organizations that were willing to sign up even without us having a team… I don’t want to speak for Jessica (Berman), when she did her site visit and came here, she was able to have lunch with a table full of those sponsors to talk to them about why they are involved. We have really aggressive, high plans from sponsorship and community engagement in our community and have seen early signs that it will be well received ,not just here in Denver, but across the ‘rodeo region’ (as some people call it) where there will be lots of opportunities for companies to get involved.”
Rob Cohen then asked Commissioner Berman to provide her thoughts and she said: “(When we came to Denver) I saw and heard first-hand the level of excitement but also the commitment to ensure that the team had the corporate support to be successful, which as we know, is critical. We are building a sustainable, long-term business here and that requires a wholistic approach, not just from the perspective of the grassroots, but also thinking about the revenue. It is quite clear that Rob and his team have aligned both the public and private sectors to underwrite the success of this team for the long term.”
Berman also said that the league was interested in Denver to have another team in the mountain time zone—along with the Salt Lake City-based Utah Royals—adding: “As we think about our next media deal and other broader macro league objectives, having a team here right now is really important.”
TribalFootball.com then asked Cohen what they found regarding about best practices for promoting and running a women’s professional football team that he found particularly interesting as he was building his franchise bid out.
He responded: “I always say that there aren’t a ton of original ideas but a lot of people take really good ideas or expand on them and make them work in their community.”
He cited the purpose-built stadium by the Kansas City Current that opened this season.
He also found: “Lots of role models in the NWSL, WNBA, training facilities, (and) the European market obviously has had great success in the introduction of the women’s game. Any smart business person is constantly having conversations and engaging in dialogue with people, and finding little nuggets here and there that are best practices that they want to incorporate into their organization. We’ve been doing that during the bid process and are doing that today at a very high level.”
Some concerns in general on the bid by some followers of the league was that Denver won simply because they were willing to pay the most in expansion fees ($110 million). Another concern is that the Colorado Rapids of the MLS has always struggled on the attendance side, finishing the 2024 season at the bottom of the 29 team league (15,181 for a league that set a record with attendance with a per game average of 23,240), though the Rapid’s stadium in Commerce City doesn’t have public transportation access.
We have discussed in the past that men’s and women’s soccer teams have very little overlap in fans/season ticket holders, so the Rapids lack of resonance in a market with MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL teams, may not be as relevant as the fact that the new NWSL team will be the only women’s professional team in the market—with the WNBA and PWHL (Professional Women’s Hockey League) likely to expand into Denver in the future—which should be a positive. Rapids owner Stan Kroenke owns Arsenal of the English Premier League and the Women’s Super League, the Colorado Avalanche National Hockey League team and the Denver Nuggets of the National Basketball Association.
Rob Cohen comes across as a very savvy sports executive who has built a strong bid organization team and leveraged corporate support throughout the State of Colorado and beyond. We will track their efforts in the lead up to the 2026 season, but we think Denver could have the impact that the Kansas City Current has had on the league over the past few seasons in terms of quickly building a presence locally, particularly with a dedicated stadium for the NWSL team coming a year or two after the launch.
Saudi Arabia Women’s League update
As an update to our recent column on imports for the Saudi Arabia Premier League: (see: The Week in Women's Football: Examining third season of Saudi Arabia Premier League - TribalFootball.com), Brazilian international forward Adriana has moved to Al Qadsiah FC of Saudi’s Women’s Premier League from the Orlando Pride of the NWSL for $500,000, as reported by the excellent U.S. women’s soccer site The Equalizer. This was the highest transfer fee for a player received in Orlando Pride history and is in the top three in NWSL history.
She is coming off a huge 2024 campaign with the Pride, scoring six goals (with one assist) in 26 games, with 21 starts, for the NWSL champions, and for Brazil as a member of their Olympic Games Final silver medalist side. She was selected to the 2019 WWC Finals side for France was had an injury and her spot was assigned to another player. She debuted for Brazil at the senior level in 2017.
In an upcoming column, this author will review the recently released FIFA report for 2024 on global transfers and fees, with huge increases in total spends in the women’s game and, as a result, Saudi Arabia is now in the top four among club spending on players, which was projected when the nation first started investing heavily in women’s football just a few years ago.
Tim Grainey is a contributor to Tribal Football. His latest book Beyond Bend it Like Beckham on the global game of women’s football. Get your copy today. Follow Tim on X: @TimGrainey