Leicester City have snapped up Ireland women\u2019s international Jessie Stapleton on a three-year contract.<\/p>\n
The 20-times capped defender had a season left on her deal at West Ham United but has opted to be part of a rebuilt Foxes squad chasing an immediate return to the Women\u2019s Super League.<\/p>\n
Their five-year spell in the top-flight was ended in May by a playoff defeat to Charlton Athletic, prompting manager Rick Passmoor to instigate an overhaul in personnel for their promotion tilt.<\/p>\n
Stapleton was recruited by the Hammers in July 2023, having helping Shelbourne win a domestic double, but spent most of her contract on loan at WSL 2 clubs Reading, Sunderland and, most recently, Nottingham Forest.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old\u2019s move continues a busy summer transfer window for Irish players, led by world-class pair Katie McCabe and Denise O\u2019Sullivan.<\/p>\n
McCabe has begun pre-season training with Chelsea after moving from London rivals Arsenal, while O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s short stint at Liverpool was recently ended by returning to the USA to sign for Gotham FC.<\/p>\n
Ireland are next in action on October 9 when they make the long trip to Kazakhstan for the first leg of the World Cup playoff semi-final.<\/p>\n
The second leg is scheduled for four days later at Pairc U\u00ed Chao\u00edmh, with the winner progressing to meet either Belgium or Poland in the final for a place at next year\u2019s World Cup in Brazil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leicester City have snapped up Ireland women\u2019s international Jessie Stapleton on a three-year contract. The 20-times capped defender…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,18998],"class_list":["post-570381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-republic-of-ireland-wnt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}