Aston Villa women have confirmed the signing of Adriana Leon from Man United on a 2-year deal. The 30-year-old becomes Carla Ward’s sixth signing of the summer.
The right-footed winger can play on either side and will provide competition to the current wingers we have while allowing rotation within the squad and quality within the team. She follows fellow winger Kirsty Hanson in leaving Man United this summer to join Villa with Carla Ward being the main mention as to why they wanted to make the switch as well as the direction the club is currently going in.
The Canadian began her career with multiple spells overseas mainly in the NWSL with teams such as Boston Breakers where she had two separate spells and Chicago Red Stars and Sky Blue FC who are now known as NY/NJ Gotham. As well as a spell in Switzerland with FC Zurich before moving to England and the WSL.
Leon joined West Ham in 2019 in their first season as a professional club. She had three successful seasons at West Ham featuring 43 times and scoring 9 league goals, before joining Manchester United on a free in the summer of 2022.
She had a pretty disappointing time at Man United only making 5 appearances scoring once before going out on loan in January 2023 to Portland Thorns. Her play time was very limited at Man United with her appearances mostly coming off the bench.
The attacker has represented her native Canada 99 times since 2012 scoring 29 goals. Her most recent appearance came in this summer’s World Cup which saw her score the winning goal against Ireland in the group stages, which would be where their tournament ended. She was also part of the Olympic gold medal-winning team in Tokyo 2022.
I am looking forward to seeing her ball control, speed and hold play in action this season, and seeing how she will be able to assist the successful attack we saw last season. It will be interesting to see how she performs and works within the team having already played alongside some of the current players such as Kirsty Hanson, Rachel Daly, Alisha Lehmann, Kenza Dali and Lucy Parker.
