Racheal Kundananji's path to world's most expensive player
It started close to home in Zambia, but it was the discovery of a Facebook picture which set the star forward on the path she's still on today...
It’s been quite a journey for Racheal Kundananj to get to where she is now.
From not even having an academy to play in back home in Zambia, less than two decades later the 24-year-old is currently the most expensive women’s football player in the world, having joined new NWSL franchise Bay FC for £625,000 at the start of 2024.
A lightning quick striker with a keen eye for goal, Kundananji ended up in Spain via Kazakhstan, earning a move eventually to Madrid CFF where she ended 2023 as the league’s second top scorer in her first season, bringing to an end Barcelona’s incredible unbeaten run in the process, before heading Stateside last year.
Alongside fellow NWSL recruit Barbra Banda, the two have become the shining beacons of hope for women’s football in Zambia ahead of the Paris Olympics where both will hope to star for their country again, one year on from a World Cup which emphasised the team’s weaknesses and didn’t allow either of their world class strikers to make an impact until the final game against Costa Rica.
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Kundananji has admitted things were so basic back home growing up as a child her and her friends used “plants for goal posts” in a nation which was not well developed in football, either male or female, and endured a tough journey to even become one of the few who got noticed enough to make it to Europe, while others were left behind.
By 2018, she was playing for Zambia’s biggest club, Indeni Roses, and her 21 goals from just 18 games should have put her on the map, but with few eyes on the African continent and particularly Zambia, it was by pure chance Kundananji ended up in Kazakhstan and on the pathway to where she is today.
“I remember in 2018 we beat Barcelona at home in the Champions League,” recalls Kaloyan Petkov, former manager of Kazakhstan’s top side, BIIK Kazygurt. “We were very solid at the back but we didn’t have much attacking strength, and we started looking at Africa as a good potential marketplace for a good player or two.
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