Naomi Girma: America's star who might just change football in Ethiopia
Football’s million-dollar woman is inspiring a generation of emerging football players both in the US and in Ethiopia.
Naomi Girma is the definition of success.
The centre back just broke the record for the most expensive transfer in women’s football when she left San Diego Wave to join Chelsea for $1.1 million. It’s a remarkable transfer, not just for the fact that it makes her the first million-dollar player in the world but it’s the first time a defender has been the most expensive player in the world (men or women) since Warney Cresswell joined Sunderland from South Shields for Sunderland in 1922 for a then world record £5,500.
It's also bucks the trend of American clubs spending big on European based players. The next two biggest outlays for players in the women’s game were Barbra Banda and Rachel Kundananji, who both moved from China and Spain respectively to the US.
Girma’ CV is certainly impressive. She’s the USWNT captain, having first donned the armband at just 23, she has both bachelors and master’s degrees from Stanford and despite tearing her ACL at college, she has established herself as arguably the best defender in football.
But what makes Girma standout even further apart from fellow USWNT teammates, is her outspoken love for Ethiopia, where her parents emigrated from to California. Girma’s father, a refugee fleeing the Ethiopian Civil War in the 1970s, walked hundreds of miles to Sudan where eventually he was resettled to San Francisco.
And Girma often credits her family and roots for giving her the tools to succeed, both academically and athletically. In fact, Girma started her football career, playing for Maleda Soccer Club, a team her father started for Ethiopians to gather and play football in a local park.
Girma has spoken widely about her desire to inspire Ethiopian Americans to play sports and succeed, but what Girma might not know is how much she is impacting football in Ethiopia.
From billboards to news bulletins, Girma’s progress is closely followed by Ethiopians, both in the US and in the East African nation.
“Naomi's representation of the Habesha community living in the US has further solidified her position as a role model for young girls in Ethiopia. Her recent move to Chelsea has generated a lot of buzz in the country, especially among football enthusiasts,” says Ethiopian journalist Firew Asrat.
“After a long while, since Gedion Zelalem's stint at Arsenal, Ethiopians now have another reason to follow English football, this time the Women's Football League.”
Ethiopia has a rich footballing heritage but has not had much to celebrate in recent years. One of the founding members of the Africa Cup of Nations, the Walias won the third edition of the men’s tournament in 1962 but since then, have fallen into obscurity.
The women’s team has fared slightly better, coming fourth in the WAFCON 2004 but haven’t qualified for Africa’s premier tournament since 2012. With clubs being mainly state run, the national women’s football league in Ethiopia is better funded than most African nations, but interest in the women’s game remains limited. Some are hoping that Girma’s success will go some way to changing that.
“Naomi Girma's remarkable success will surely change perceptions about Ethiopians and football,” Siye Gebremichael, a retired footballer who spent most of her professional career playing for Ethiopia Bunna, Ethiopia’s second largest football club.
“I wish I had a role model like Naomi during my formative years… Naomi proudly embracing her Ethiopian heritage helps shift narratives and provides proof that football players of Ethiopian and Eritrean origin can shine on global platforms.”
For most nations, hoping a player from the diaspora could change perceptions back home would be quite fanciful, but Ethiopia is not like most countries.
Not only is it Africa’s second most populated country (roughly 132 million population) and possesses one of the largest diasporas from the continent but it is a deeply proud and inwardly focused country. It is the only country in Africa not to use Roman or Arabic scripts, and Habesha (people from Ethiopia and Eritrea) are fiercely proud of Ethiopia’s status as the only African nation never to be colonised by a European nation.
It's for that reason that Gebremichael and others, including Ethiopia’s current national captain and all-time top scorer Loza Abera, are hopeful that Naomi Girma and fellow USWNT Ethiopian teammate Lily Yohannes can change the narrative.
“Naomi is a big achievement for us all in the Habesha community. She is our pride,” Abera tells On The Whistle.
“Habesha people watch a lot in the Premier League. I think that's I think now Naomi is in Chelsea she’ll have a lot more attention. Also, the club will now get more fans who will follow Chelsea.”
Abera’s journey is in many ways more inspiring than Girma’s. Born in rural Ethiopia, Abera has gone onto having a brilliant career. She is the all-time top scorer for both the national team and in the Ethiopian national league. She had a couple successful stints in Sweden and Malta before returning to Ethiopia where she won four league titles with Commercial Bank of Ethiopia FC as well as becoming the top scorer in CAF Champions League qualifying.
In 2024 she got her dream move to the US where she now plays for DC Power FC in the USL Super League.
Challenging Ethiopia and FIFA’s status quo
And while many are hopeful that Girma’s move to Chelsea will help prompt a cultural change in Ethiopia, others are pushing for it to make legal changes.
For all the pride in Girma’s achievements as well as her deep connection to her roots, some Ethiopians are frustrated that Girma was never given the chance to represent the land of her parents. While there are plenty of reasons that Girma may have chosen to play for the US over Ethiopia, she was never given the opportunity to choose because Ethiopia does not currently allow for dual-citizenship and so any player born outside of Ethiopia would have to renounce their own citizenship before playing for the Walias.
Some Ethiopians are hoping that the profile of Girma’s success will help put pressure on the government as well as FIFA to change their respective rules on nationality, to allow for future players like Girma to play for Ethiopia.
Chief among those pushing for change is David Beshah, the Ethiopia national team’s first ever scout.
Beshah had a unique playing career, somewhat inverting the norm. Born to an Ethiopian father and a German mother in Cologne. Beshah played in the lower divisions of German football until he was called up to the Ethiopian national team for a training camp. It was after that camp that Beshah decided to move to Ethiopia where he played for Ethiopia Bunna for two years.
Since retiring Beshah has moved back to Germany and relentlessly travels around Europe, scouting the best talent from the diaspora, hoping to convince them to change nationality and play for their parents’ homeland.
“I lived in Ethiopia for six years and when I returned to Germany, I started to research Ethiopian players in Europe and I have now nearly 200 potential players in my database,” he tells On the Whistle.
“I started eight years ago, and I always advocated for this and three years ago I think the federation had heard enough and they assigned me to scout the players and also contact them and then report back to them.”
While Ethiopia doesn’t offer dual-citizenship, they offer anyone who has parents or grandparents from the country to access a national ID card. With that card they can move to Ethiopia without a visa, they can own property in the country or work in the country. To gain the ID card, Ethiopians from the diaspora have to go through all the same checks as if they were applying for a passport. But FIFA’s rules currently only for players with a passport from a country to represent them.
Beshah hopes that Girma’s success, as well as other high profile Habesha players like Lily Yohannes and Alexander Isak (from Eritrea) will build further pressure on the Ethiopian government to loosen their rules around citizenship, even just for athletes.
Particularly with Ethiopia making a bid to host the 2029 AFCON, Beshah believes that introducing foreign born players could uplift the quality of the national team and the structures around it, a sentiment that Abera agrees with.
“In my opinion, it would be a good opportunity for the Ethiopian national team. Because for Naomi or Lily ones, they already play for other countries but my experience in here in America, even in our club, girls who are born here in America. They are Americans, but they play for their parents’ country,” she says.
“I think it would be good, if maybe three or four players joined us and played because I think our football would improve and become more challenging for the opponents.”
And while he’s pushing the Ethiopian government, Beshah is simultaneously trying to push FIFA to do the same and loosen their regulations that currently state players must have a passport of any country they represent.
“We already have contacted a law firm from Spain and the guy there said, ‘no, I think you have a good case with this origin ID card because it basically goes through the same process as acquiring an Ethiopian passport. It's the same institution behind it, the Ministry of the Immigration.”
Beshah is currently waiting on the Ministry of Immigration to confirm the status of the ID cards so that he can approach FIFA to change the laws.
It may be too late for Naomi Girma to represent the Walias, but it’s not too late for her to be the catalyst of change in Ethiopia. Regardless, millions of Ethiopians around the world will follow and support her.