🏏 Sun, 16 Nov 2025 12:00 GMT
Brighton Women
vs
Leicester City Women
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- Brighton field two of their three Japan internationals from the start. Seike (29, right winger, No. 11) became the first player to score a hat-trick on her WSL debut, arriving after a 2023-24 WE League season in which she swept the scoring title, MVP award and Best XI selection. She is comfortable in every outfield role, so expect her to appear at several heights across the pitch.
- Moeka Minami (26) anchors the Brighton back line. The centre-back won back-to-back Serie A Femminile titles with AS Roma before joining permanently in June 2025, reuniting her with former Urawa Reds Ladies team-mate Seike. At 172cm she combines duel strength with the leadership she showed captaining Japan at the AFC U-19 Championship and the U-20 World Cup.
- A third Japanese option waits on the bench in Fuka Tsunoda (21), a holding midfielder who collected five domestic honours at Urawa including two WE League titles before moving to Brighton in September 2025. Her reading of danger and high-press ball-winning give the hosts a different midfield profile, and her introduction would put three Japan internationals on the field at once.
- The goalkeeping duel is worth the ticket alone. Brighton's Chiamaka Nnadozie (24) is Nigeria's 180cm first choice, signed from Paris FC in the summer of 2025 and a 2025 CAF award winner. Leicester counter with Janina Leitzig (26), the 183cm German who converted a Bayern Munich loan into a permanent deal and was later voted the club's player of the year.
- Brighton's engine room runs through captain Maisie Symonds (22), appointed skipper in the summer of 2025 after arriving from Chelsea's academy in 2021 and earning a first senior England call-up in March 2025. Ahead of her, Serbia's Jelena Cankovic (30) supplies the creativity, drawing on two WSL titles at Chelsea plus Champions League campaigns with Barcelona and FC Rosengard.
- Leicester answer with experience. Emily van Egmond (32) has 163 Australia caps, two Bundesliga titles from her Wolfsburg days and an AFC Women's Asian Cup winner's medal from 2010, and she sets the tempo with her range of passing. Behind her, American midfielder Celeste Boureille (31) screens the defence using the positional discipline she built over five seasons and 71 appearances with Portland Thorns.
- The attacking contrast is sharp. Brighton lead the line with Madison Haley (27), the Stanford University product whose finishing and physicality earned a contract extension in 2025. Leicester pair Finland striker Jutta Rantala (26) with Wales winger Hannah Cain (26), a left-footer who thrives cutting in from the left. At 160cm Rantala relies on instinct in the box, having won her homeland's scoring title and player of the year award in 2019.
- Leicester's defence is organised by captain Sam Tierney (27), the club's all-time appearance record holder who scored the goal that sealed their promotion to the WSL. Alongside her are Belgium international Sari Kees (24), a former goalkeeper turned centre-back, and Asmita Ale (24), who came through Aston Villa's academy and joined via Tottenham. Both relish aerial and one-v-one duels.
- Both benches hold game-changing wingers. Brighton can call on Sweden's Rosa Kafaji (22), on loan from Arsenal after 28 goals for BK Hacken and four more in the Champions League, bringing pace and close control. Leicester have Morocco's 180cm Rosella Ayane (29), a Chelsea academy graduate who started all six matches and scored twice as her country finished runners-up at the 2022 Women's Africa Cup of Nations.