Lia Walti Returns to WSL: A Quest for Value and Standards
Lia Walti did not leave Juventus chasing money or medals. She left because, in her words, she stopped feeling valued as a footballer.
After just one season in Italy, the Switzerland captain has come back to the Women’s Super League, signing for Brighton and stepping straight back into the environment she believes sets the global standard for the women’s game.
‘I missed feeling valued’
Walti arrived at Juventus last summer with a bulging CV. Seven years at Arsenal, 183 appearances, four major trophies, including a Champions League and a WSL title. She was part of the core that helped drag English women’s football into a new era of professionalism and visibility.
Italy was meant to be a fresh challenge. Instead, the contrast stunned her.
“It’s such a huge difference,” she told BBC Sport. “I don’t want to speak too negatively about the Italian league, that is not my aim. It’s more that it’s just the reality that football in England, in the WSL, has a standard which is not comparable with any other league.”
The word she keeps returning to is “standards” – not just wages or facilities, but the feeling of being in a fully professional environment. In Italy, she simply did not feel that.
“I missed the feeling of being valued as a footballer, feeling like we’re getting the full support we needed,” she said.
She talks about basics that should not feel luxurious at this level: good structures, proper pitches, the sense of a club built around elite sport. What really hurt, though, was the emptiness.
“We had absolutely no fan culture – not just at Juve – in general in Italy,” Walti said. “In Italy, it was just [empty]. Every game felt a bit like that. I missed the feeling I had before when I was playing football.”
In England, even a small ground can feel like a cauldron when it’s full and engaged. Walti had lived that growth at Arsenal. Going from that to sparse crowds and flat atmospheres was a shock.
The WSL as the exception, not the rule
Walti is 33 now, a centurion for Switzerland who captained her country at Euro 2025 on home soil. She has seen the game climb from semi-professional corners to sold-out stadiums and prime-time TV slots. That journey shapes how she views everything.
In England, she realised, the WSL’s level is not the global norm – it’s the outlier.
“It’s a bit sad and disappointing to see a lot of girls abroad do not have the same opportunities or standards in terms of being in professional environments,” she said.
For her, visibility is a huge part of the problem.
“I think you have to bring the game to the people. You kind of have to force people to watch it. I felt that that’s how it maybe started in England,” Walti explained.
She is blunt about what she sees elsewhere.
“In Italy, and in a lot of other countries, I think they have bad coverage. It’s not shown [on TV] at all, or if it’s shown, from where they film it, is really poor.
“It affects the way you watch a game. You don’t really see the speed, the tactics or anything and you don’t enjoy watching the game. In England, in the big stadiums, you can have great camera angles. I think people enjoy watching it more.”
The message is clear: if you present the game like an afterthought, people will treat it like one.
‘The biggest lacking starts with pitch quality’
Coverage is only one layer. Walti sees a deeper structural neglect in women’s football across many countries.
“The biggest lacking starts with pitch quality,” she said. “In a lot of countries, you play either on the worst artificial pitches or the worst natural grasses.
“Even if a Premier League team were to play there, it would probably look rubbish because it’s just not possible to play nice football on it.”
She doesn’t spare her home nation either.
“All of the other leagues, where do you even start? It’s so hard. We have the same [issues] in Switzerland.
“You have to do the first step – invest money for all those things before you get something back. I think a lot of countries don’t have that money or patience.”
Walti speaks with the conviction of someone who has lived both extremes. Early in her career, conditions were far from glamorous even in England.
“We used to not have good conditions. It wasn’t professional. Our first salaries were not enough to live from,” she recalled.
Now she looks around the WSL and sees what targeted investment can do – and feels the frustration of knowing that many of her peers elsewhere are still stuck in environments that stunt their careers.
“You forget sometimes, when you’re in your own bubble, that this is not the norm. You’re just one of the lucky ones who can experience it.
“A lot of talent in women’s football gets lost because they are in bad environments where nobody sees them or they don’t have the chance to reach their potential.
“I try to make an impact and I think that was really hard in Italy because I felt like when we spoke up, nothing happened, and that was frustrating.”
Why Brighton?
When it came to deciding her future, with a year left on her Juventus deal, Walti knew exactly what she did not want to repeat. She needed a club that matched her expectations of professionalism and ambition.
Brighton ticked those boxes quickly.
The club has laid out plans for Europe’s first purpose-built women’s football stadium, a £75-80m project that sends a loud message about long-term commitment. The women’s team already trains at the American Express Elite Football Performance Centre after an £8.5m investment in 2021.
On the pitch, Brighton reached the Women’s FA Cup final for the first time in May and have spent aggressively in the transfer market. Under Dario Vidosic, they are openly targeting a place among the WSL’s top three.
For Walti, that combination of infrastructure and intent mattered.
“After that experience in Italy, I knew a bit more about what I probably wanted, or didn’t want,” she said.
“I had a pretty big trust in Brighton before we had the conversations because I had been in the league and seen what the club was doing.
“I’ve heard from other players about the club investing a lot and I only heard really positive things. There is no better feedback than from other players.
“Once I started to have the first moments with the club, it proved to me that this is the right place – that cares about women’s football, that invests in women’s football, and who has the right people in place.”
For a player who has spent her career pushing standards higher, Brighton offer more than a fresh start. They offer alignment. The question now is whether that shared ambition can pull them into the WSL’s elite – and how many others across Europe will follow their lead.
