The smile gives it away first. When Naomi Girma joins me in a box overlooking the deserted pitch at Stamford Bridge, she greets me with a dazzling beam—the stuff of toothpaste commercials, ’80s CoverGirl campaigns, billboards over Sunset Boulevard—that feels as incongruous, in these bland, if hallowed, halls, as the pearl-studded Simone Rocha Crocs I spied stacked neatly on the blue carpet in a neighboring corporate suite.
Chelsea FC Women’s star signing may be a newly minted Londoner, but the teeth are pure Hollywood, although technically Girma hails from San Jose, a few hours up the coast. She’s been lured to London by Sonia Bompastor’s league-bestriding Blues—and a fee to match that million-dollar smile. Previously at San Diego Wave Fútbol Club, the 24-year-old center back was on a plane to the UK within days of the deal being signed in the January transfer window, a check of around $1.1 million from Chelsea having conferred upon her the title of most expensive player in the women’s game.
She’s nonetheless an understated presence. Still in glam from her British Vogue shoot (hence the haute Crocs), Girma has ditched the Talia Byre tracksuit for team sweats, her braids swept back to allow her wide brown eyes and stellar brows to take center stage. Possibly due to having grown up in Britain at a time when soccer was synonymous with flash—think David Beckham screeching between Old Trafford and Bond Street in a Ferrari 360 Spider with a personalized license plate—I can’t resist diving straight in with how she’s celebrated. Perhaps a new car? Shoes? A tattoo? She ponders for a second, ripping open a bag of popcorn as we settle in at one end of the polished conference table. “I’ve been trying not to purchase anything until I’m in my actual apartment,” she says finally. Then, laughing: “I have enough suitcases full of stuff that I traveled with.” Meanwhile, recovering from jet lag took priority over throwing a party to mark her arrival in London.
How was leaving the West Coast for Blighty in the dead of winter, I ask, gesturing apologetically at the watery March sunlight leaking through the picture windows. “It’s been good!” insists Girma. Really? “I had a few rough patches,” she concedes, still grinning. “I had one training session where it was hailing. I was like… ‘Oh.’” But now spring is in the air and, while Fulham is low on balmy breezes, “Everyone seems happier.”
Girma was making sporting headlines well before her splashy move to Stamford Bridge. Having captained her college team to become national champions in 2019, the Stanford University grad was scarcely out of her cap and gown when San Diego selected her as the first pick in the 2022 National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) draft. She announced her arrival on the professional scene by winning rookie of the year in her first season and by 2023 was part of the USA’s starting line-up for the World Cup—not to mention being hailed by legendary player Megan Rapinoe as the future of the squad.
“I know nothing is as easy as Naomi makes it look, but my God, she glides around the pitch as if she’s out for a Sunday stroll,” Rapinoe tells me. “She’s an absolute force,” adds retired center back, and fellow American, Becky Sauerbrunn, whom Girma cites as a particular inspiration. “Someone who has the compassion and intelligence to be a wonderful leader of people, the vision and timing to do whatever she wants on a field and make it look easy, and the self-awareness and drive to bring everyone along with her.”
All of this was on glorious display in Paris last summer, where Girma made her Olympic debut at the 2024 Games. She played every minute of Team USA’s six matches and was instrumental in their securing a remarkable fifth gold, roared on by the more than 40,000 fans in the stands (her parents and Tom Cruise among them), with a record-breaking nine million more watching at home in the States. Their Brazilian opponents simply couldn’t find a way past a Naomi Girma-led backline, the sports pages said. The team’s British head coach, Emma Hayes, called her “the best defender I’ve ever seen.”
“It felt like a fever dream summer,” Girma says now. She’d always loved the Olympics: she and her similarly sporty older brother, Nathaniel, and their parents would gather around the TV back home to watch the Games. “For me to be selected for the roster was a huge honor. It was incredible.” And that time she did celebrate… “We had a big party after with all of our family and friends. It was really fun to have everyone in one place.” The new gold medalist then flew on to Greece with a trio of friends from Stanford. Naomi is a travel junkie and their girls’ trips have become a tradition. “We went to Mykonos.” To the clubs? “Oh, no, I was sleeping. I was horizontal on the beach.”
Girma’s bar-raising transfer fee, while still dwarfed by the sums sloshing around the men’s game, points not only to her skill, but also the skyrocketing profile of women’s soccer in the UK. It’s long been popular in the States, but even five years ago in Britain, birthplace of the beautiful game, the average England fan would have had limited knowledge of the women’s team. Now the Lionesses are the reigning European champions—come July, record-breaking numbers of supporters are expected to watch as they battle to retain that crown at the 2025 Euros. Matches routinely fill stadiums, and pubs too, now that Women’s Super League games are broadcast on Sky Sports and the BBC. Expectations surrounding Girma’s arrival at the country’s top club were, it’s safe to say, high.
If she feels any pressure, it doesn’t show. “I think, as an athlete, you always want to be playing on the biggest stage and you want to be playing the biggest games,” she says simply. Before high-stakes matches, “I try to be in the moment and not think of the weight of what’s happening. I mean, there’s still nerves—there will be nerves forever—but there’s more excitement.” No doubt she’s hungry to make her mark at Chelsea, but the calf injury that forced her off the pitch an hour into her first appearance in March has kept her on the sidelines since, as her new club closes in on a sixth successive league title. (Girma ultimately returned at the end of April as her team faced Barcelona.) Is it frustrating? She appears briefly fascinated by her second bag of popcorn. “Yes. I think injuries are very frustrating.” There’s a protracted pause and, though her smile returns, she doesn’t move to fill it.
Girma’s trajectory could appear as smooth and considered as one of her penetrating passes out to the wing, but even though her talent was apparent early on, for a long time soccer was just for fun, she says. She fell in love with the game at the grassroots club her dad founded in San Jose. “My parents came to the US from Ethiopia and soccer is massive there. My dad grew up playing.” Girma Aweke, who fled the civil war and arrived in the States as a refugee, started Maleda Soccer Club as a way for children from the local Ethiopian community—his own included—to get to know one another at the weekends. “It kind of went from there,” says Naomi. “I was playing competitively in middle school and high school, but I didn’t know how far I could take it. College is when I started to realize, ‘Oh, I could go pro. I could make something of this.’”
Even with Aweke’s personal passion for the sport, there was no attempt to push Naomi towards pursuing a career in the NWSL. “My parents were encouraging in the sense that they didn’t care what I did,” she says. They didn’t go in for pressure: have fun and do well in school was the motto in the Girma household. “Soccer, no soccer, they didn’t care that much.” And now? “They’re along for the ride,” she says.
Still, there was never any danger of their daughter drifting. Girma describes herself as considering every conceivable outcome before making any decision. “Then I’m like, ‘OK, I’m deciding I’m going to do this,’ instead of feeling like it’s just the next thing I should do. I like to… I don’t know what the word is—probably overthink.” Soccer won out, but you get the sense that any number of paths to success were possible. Girma is currently juggling her game with studying for a masters in management science and engineering to add to her existing degree in symbolic systems, a unique-to-Stanford program blending math, philosophy, statistics, and more. (Notable fellow graduates include Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram.) She nods enthusiastically when I ask if she’s always been academic. Her studies, she says, give her an opportunity to switch off and think about something else after training.
Girma’s more relatable recreational activities include taking herself to the park with a vanilla latte and a book (she’s just finished John Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies and is now on to Trevor Noah’s memoir). She likes to cook and plans to explore London’s Ethiopian restaurant scene in search of a good kitfo, a traditional dish of spiced minced beef. “That was always mine and my brother’s favorite growing up. I have to find it wherever I’m living.” Other than that, Girma journals and enjoys an LED mask moment. She’s big on self-care generally, particularly ahead of crucial matches. “I’ll turn my social media off and really focus on what’s important and what’s in my control, to take away some of the outside pressure.”
Certain words recur in analyses of Girma’s attributes as a player: intelligence, composure, calm. That’s also a pretty accurate summation of how she presents in conversation, although I’d be tempted to add guarded. Certain topics are off the table today. One is her best friend, and Stanford teammate, who died by suicide three years ago. The loss prompted Girma, who dedicated her 2023 World Cup campaign to her friend, to help set up Create the Space, a retreat designed to encourage conversations around mental health in women’s football.
Another is Donald Trump, who as we speak is dismantling diversity programs at home in the US. Girma, who is the first player of Ethiopian descent in the history of the United States women’s national team (“my parents always feel really proud when they hear that”), will say that diversity is “super important.” It was widely seen as key to Team USA’s enormous success at the 2024 Games—not so very long ago, the country’s Olympic athletes were overwhelmingly white. “It was really cool for us to be on the highest stage representing how impactful it can be,” she says, “not only to our team, but also to the people watching.” Naomi’s own heritage, of course, informed her upbringing in countless ways. “Family and community is such a big thing in Ethiopia—our parents made sure that me and my brother had those values, of really supporting your friends and family, and being there for one another.”
Girma glows when she talks about her family—Nathaniel has already been over for a visit and her mother is due in a couple of weeks—and discussions around the next girls’ holiday are underway in the group chat. “We might go to Mexico,” she says, although it seems her habit of overthinking doesn’t extend to destinations and itineraries. “I’m not the one in the friend group who plans the trips,” she admits, laughing.
She has a ready-made circle at Chelsea too: she’s close to midfielder Catarina Macario, who she played with in college, and to their USA teammate Mia Fishel. “It was really nice to go in knowing they were there already. Honestly, after a few days I was like, OK, it’s normal that I’m here.” So she’s taking it all in, ready to turn that single-minded focus to what brought her here: winning trophies. “I’m excited to be part of this team and the legacy and culture around it,” she says. “I’m just excited for this chapter.”
In this story: hair and make-up, Karla Quiñonez Leon. Nails, Simone Cummings. Digital artwork: ECone Lab.