Lia Walti's Journey: From Juventus Frustration to Brighton Ambition
Lia Walti did not leave Juventus for a bigger pay day or a glamorous postcode. She left because, in her words, she stopped feeling valued as a footballer.
The Switzerland captain, a serial winner at Arsenal and one of the most respected midfielders of her generation, lasted just one season in Italy before returning to the Women’s Super League with Brighton this summer. The contrast, she says, was “extreme”.
From Arsenal’s peak to Italian frustration
Walti spent seven years at Arsenal, anchoring midfield as the club lifted four major trophies, including the Champions League and WSL titles. She played 183 times for the Gunners, became a leader in a dressing room full of stars and helped drive the club through a crucial phase of the women’s game’s growth in England.
Last summer, she decided she needed a new challenge. Juventus, a giant name in European football, looked like the right step.
It quickly felt very different.
“It’s such a huge difference,” she told BBC Sport, choosing her words carefully. She refused to take aim at Italy for the sake of it, but she did not sugar-coat the gap. The professionalism she had grown used to in England, she said, was on another level.
Football in the WSL, in her view, has a standard “not comparable with any other league”. That realisation cut both ways. It made her proud of what had been built in England. It also made her acutely aware of what many players elsewhere still do not have.
She spoke of “a lot of girls abroad” who lack proper professional environments, who simply do not get the same opportunities or standards. The WSL, she came to understand, is not the norm. It is the outlier.
Empty stands, missing culture
What Walti missed most was not a particular stadium or a specific team. It was the feeling.
“I missed the feeling of being valued as a footballer, feeling like we’re getting the full support we needed,” she said.
At Juventus and across Italy, she described “absolutely no fan culture”. Not just one club’s problem. A wider one. Matches played in front of rows of empty seats. Games that felt flat before a ball had even been kicked.
In England, she had watched the crowds grow, the atmospheres swell, the noise turn small grounds into cauldrons. Even the tight, modest venues felt alive. Full. Exciting.
In Italy, she said, it was “just [empty]”. Every game carried that same hollow echo. The joy she had known in north London and across the WSL was missing. So was the sense of being part of something that mattered to people.
For a player who captained her country at Euro 2025 on home soil and has passed 100 caps for Switzerland, that absence hit hard.
‘You have to bring the game to the people’
Walti has lived the rise of women’s football in England. She believes other countries can follow, but only if they are willing to push the product to the public.
“I think you have to bring the game to the people. You kind of have to force people to watch it,” she said, reflecting on how the WSL built its audience.
Coverage, she argued, is a huge part of the problem elsewhere. In Italy and in many other leagues, she sees “bad coverage”. Matches not shown at all. Or, if they are, filmed from angles and distances that strip away the speed and tactical detail.
“It affects the way you watch a game,” she said. Viewers do not feel the intensity. They do not see the patterns. They do not enjoy it.
In England’s big stadiums, with proper camera setups and broadcast standards, the game looks like what it is: elite sport. That matters. People are far more likely to come back if what they see on screen feels sharp, fast and serious.
The basics still missing
For Walti, television is only one piece. The more fundamental issue, she believes, lies under players’ boots.
“The biggest lacking starts with pitch quality,” she said. Across many countries, women’s teams are still sent out on the “worst artificial pitches or the worst natural grasses”.
Put a Premier League side on those surfaces, she argued, and the football would look poor too. “It’s just not possible to play nice football on it.”
She did not spare her homeland either. Switzerland faces the same problems. And it all comes back to investment – and patience.
“You have to do the first step – invest money for all those things before you get something back,” she said. Too many countries, in her view, lack both the funds and the willingness to wait.
A privileged view – and a growing anger
Walti admits she is one of the lucky ones. She remembers when conditions in England were not good, when salaries were not enough to live on and professionalism was more aspiration than reality.
Now she trains and plays in a world-class environment and watches others trying to drag standards up in their own countries. That contrast fuels her frustration.
“You forget sometimes, when you’re in your own bubble, that this is not the norm,” she said. “You’re just one of the lucky ones who can experience it.”
She worries about the talent that disappears in silence – players stuck in poor environments, unseen, unable to reach their potential.
That is why she speaks out. She wants to make an impact. In Italy, she felt like her voice bounced off a wall. “When we spoke up, nothing happened,” she said. That sense of shouting into the void weighed on her.
Why Brighton, why now
With a year left on her Juventus contract, Walti faced a decision. Stay in a system where change felt distant, or return to a league that had already shown her what a serious women’s football project looks like.
Brighton, she knew, were building something.
The club announced plans in April for Europe’s first purpose-built women’s football stadium, a £75-80m statement of intent. The women’s team already train at the American Express Elite Football Performance Centre, following an £8.5m investment completed in 2021.
On the pitch, Brighton reached the Women’s FA Cup final for the first time in May and have been active in the transfer market. Under head coach Dario Vidosic, they are openly chasing a place among the WSL’s top three.
For Walti, that ambition mattered. So did the feeling that the club genuinely cares.
“After that experience in Italy, I knew a bit more about what I probably wanted, or didn’t want,” she said.
She had watched Brighton from afar during her Arsenal days, seen the facilities, heard the talk. Crucially, she listened to other players. Their verdict was clear: Brighton invest. Brighton look after their women’s team. Brighton are serious.
“There is no better feedback than from other players,” she said. Once she met the people inside the club, those impressions hardened into certainty.
“Once I started to have the first moments with the club, it proved to me that this is the right place – that cares about women’s football, that invests in women’s football, and who has the right people in place.”
Walti has chosen her side in the battle for standards. Now Brighton must show they can match her expectations – and turn that care into trophies.
