{"id":672753,"date":"2026-07-04T03:16:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T03:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/672753\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T03:16:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T03:16:17","slug":"womens-super-league-chelsea-sign-japan-midfielder-manaka-matsukubo-from-nwsl-side-north-carolina-courage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/672753\/","title":{"rendered":"Women&#8217;s Super League: Chelsea sign Japan midfielder Manaka Matsukubo from NWSL side North Carolina Courage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Chelsea have signed Japan international Manaka Matsukubo on a five-year contract.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 21-year-old midfielder has joined the club from National Women&#8217;s Soccer League (NWSL) side North Carolina Courage in the United States.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Matsukubo scored 19 goals and provided 10 assists in 58 matches for North Carolina and was named NWSL midfielder of the year in 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m so excited to be joining Chelsea, a club with a lot of history,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The club has a strong history of winning trophies and has done so well at the top of the game, so I couldn&#8217;t pass up this opportunity. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I want to help continue this club&#8217;s tradition of winning trophies for years to come.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chelsea have signed Japan international Manaka Matsukubo on a five-year contract. The 21-year-old midfielder has joined the club&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-672753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}