Already a Trophy Winner in Three Leagues, a New Chapter for Katie Zelem

In addition to her technical skill, leadership experience, and multiple trophies across three leagues, Angel City’s newest signing, midfielder Katie Zelem, appealed to the coaching staff for a more intangible reason: she knows what it takes to build a new club into a championship-winning team, because she’s done it multiple times.

Zelem, meanwhile, was attracted to the club’s on-field vision. “I spoke to Becki, I spoke to [Technical Director Mark Wilson], and they had a very clear identity and philosophy of how they wanted to play,” she says. “That was a huge thing to me, as well as their ambitions for the team and what Angela mentioned about where the team want to go.”

Before signing with Angel City, the 28-year-old most recently captained Manchester United, which she joined in 2018, the year the storied club started its women’s section. She helped the team win promotion to the top tier after their first season, going on to win the FA Cup in the 2023–2024 season. Before United, she won the 2017–2018 Serie A Femminile title with Juventus in that league’s inaugural season.

Zelem is clear that her goals with Angel City are no different: “Obviously, this season the aim is playoffs,” the midfielder says. “I’m here to win. I want to win the championship.”

“I'm really excited to have somebody that's had that experience of starting in a place where [her team] had to continue to grow,” says Head Coach Becki Tweed, “and eventually [won] trophies.”

Zelem grew up in Manchester, the daughter of former semi-pro goalkeeper Alan Zelem, whose twin brother, Peter Zelem, played professionally as a defender. The younger Zelem was six years old when she joined her first organized club, a boys’ team, and eight when she started at Manchester United’s Girls’ Center of Excellence.

When, after nine years at the club, she was ready to take the next step in her career, she had to sign with Liverpool, because United had no professional women’s side at the time. “Liverpool were the only fully professional team at the time,” she says. “So it made sense to me to go there.”

On the field, Zelem has played throughout the central midfield, but says she feels most comfortable as a defensive or box-to-box mid. “I think I can bring a mixture of contributing to goal as well as contributing to the buildout,” she says. 

“As a more technical player,” she continues, “I like to get on the ball and make things happen, whether that be connecting the defense to the attack or hopefully creating some chances.”

Tweed praises Zelem’s versatility and technical quality. “She’s brilliant in dead-ball situations and from set pieces,” says Tweed. “She’s a box-to box midfielder, her creative forward pass is brilliant, she breaks the game up and reads the game really well. Just a really good footballer with that quality that we’ve looked to add in the midfield.”

The numbers back up Tweed’s point about Zelem’s quality in dead-ball situations: the midfielder holds the WSL record for set piece assists, with 17. In 2022, she also impressively scored three goals directly off corner kicks in the space of two games. 

Zelem has known forward Claire Emslie for a number of years through Emslie’s Scotland teammate, Caroline Weir, who Zelem played with at Liverpool. In their conversations while Zelem was considering Angel City, Emslie, she says, presented a positive, but realistic image of the club, not glossing over the areas the team is still working on. “There’s always going to be some challenges in a new team,” Zelem says, “and it’s important to know what’s good and what needs work. What drew me in was, really good players, a really good staff, and a staff that believes in their vision.”

When Zelem was deciding what number she’d wear at Angel City, Emslie told her, “‘You know, on the shirt numbers, a lot of the girls switch around, they're not that fussy.’”

Zelem has worn the number 10 at all her clubs, starting when she was growing up at United. “I was like, ‘oh, I’ll just have a look at who number 10 is [at Angel City], then. Maybe they’ll want to switch,’” she says. “And I click on it and it’s Claire.”

“I called her back and said, ‘you know how you said people don’t mind switching numbers? I want the number ten,’” Zelem laughs. “She was like, ‘don’t you dare!’”

In the end, she settled on the number 4—a new number for a new chapter in her career, and a new challenge.

But while every club is different and the intensely competitive nature of the NWSL will be new to Zelem, some things don’t change. Coming into yet another team in a building phase, “I think the main thing is to always believe in yourself and not to settle,” she says. “You have to keep pushing your standards every single day, whether that's on the pitch or off on the pitch. And I think both staff and players need a shared collective goal of, ‘we might be here now, but next year we could be top of the table.’”