Manaka Matsukubo has joined Chelsea from NC Courage ahead of the new campaign. The 21-year-old Japan international arrives after winning the NWSL Midfielder of the Year award in 2025, giving Chelsea a player who has already shaped matches at international level.
Manaka Matsukubo and Chelsea
Her move fits a clear target. Matsukubo said playing in the Champions League has been a dream of hers since she was a little girl, and she added that competing there will be the biggest difference from the NWSL. She also said she cannot wait to test herself in the WSL, where the pace and intensity are different again.
That matters because Chelsea are adding her as they prepare for Champions League and WSL competition. Matsukubo described Stamford Bridge as very historic and said she is happy to be there, a response that matches the scale of the move without changing its football logic: Chelsea have signed a midfielder who already expects a sharper weekly standard.
Maika Hamano and Chelsea
The transfer also carries a built-in connection. Matsukubo said she first met Maika Hamano when she left Kagoshima at 13 for the Japan Football Association’s national academy, and the two played together at elite tournaments when they were younger. She said she could not give up the chance to reunite with her former teammate.
She has also heard plenty from Hamano about Chelsea, the level and the intensity. For Matsukubo, that gives the move a familiar thread inside a new setting. It is not a simple change of club; it is a step into an environment she already knows through one teammate and has wanted to reach since childhood.
Japan and the NWSL
Matsukubo brings recent winning form with her. She helped Japan win the SheBelieves Cup last year and the Asian Cup this year, then followed that by taking the NWSL Midfielder of the Year award in 2025. She said the number ten role is the one she occupies best, while she is also comfortable leading the line.
Her standout qualities, in her own words, are receiving the ball in tight spaces and creating chances for others. She has lived away from home since she was 13, and that background helps explain why this move reads as more than a standard transfer. Having already spent years away from Kagoshima, she now walks into Chelsea with a clear football argument and a personal one: the Champions League song she has wanted to hear in person for years.
