Maya Le Tissier is on the road to becoming a United Women legend
Manchester United's newest captain is a natural leader and already the WSL's youngest player to reach 100 starts in the competition.
Image: Jamie Spencer
Manchester United have played 69 games since Maya Le Tissier joined the club from Brighton in the summer of 2022. She has played in all 69 of them.
Last season, Le Tissier was the only United player on the pitch for every minute of every game in every competition. The last time she didn’t start for the club was the League Cup dead rubber against Sheffield United at Leigh Sports Village a week before Christmas in December 2022, later appearing off the bench in the second half. The only other game she didn’t start that season, but again featured as a substitute later on, was another League Cup fixture against Everton.
Le Tissier has an unsatiable appetite for football that makes her so determined to always play no matter what.
It means that five games into her third season with United, she is already into the top ten on the club’s list of appearances (post-2018). Over the coming months, it is likely the defender will overtake Ona Batlle (77), Kirsty Hanson (90) and Hannah Blundell (91) to hit the top seven.
By the start of 2025/26, having played just three seasons, Le Tissier will be on the cusp of joining United’s centurions – a select group of legends with 100 appearances: Ella Toone (168), Katie Zelem (161), Millie Turner (149), Leah Galton (139), Mary Earps (125) and Hayley Ladd (105).
Last Saturday, Le Tissier broke Lauren Hemp’s record as the youngest player to reach 100 WSL starts at the age of just 22 years and 184 days. Including substitute appearances, she’s up to 106 in the competition, having made her WSL debut in a Brighton defeat to Chelsea in December 2018. She was only 16 at the time and just six months removed from playing in a boys’ team at home on Guernsey.
Le Tissier later became the first player born and raised on one of the Channel Islands to play for England Women when she made her senior international debut in November 2022, and serving as an inspiration to other island players is something that also drives her.
“I thought I'd just be the first one to do it so I can break the path down so they can see that they can," she told BBC Radio Guernsey last month. "My dad said to me the other day that we've got a couple playing over here now, so that means a lot to me to show them that you can.”
Le Tissier’s football upbringing was quite remarkable. While many female players still get their start in the game playing alongside boys at a young age, most have stopped their teens. Without girls’ teams on the island, she continued with the boys at Under-16 and Under-18 levels when she was 15, and even represented Guernsey in 2018’s annual Under-16 trophy against rivals Jersey.
By early 2020, a 17-year-old Le Tissier had firmly established herself in Brighton’s first-team and that was the last time – missing from January defeats against Arsenal and West Ham – she didn’t start a WSL fixture. It’s now 95 consecutive starts and counting.
Her transfer to United in the summer of 2022 was the next step and a defining moment, a release clause triggered, reported at the time to be in the region of £50,000 and £60,000. She had played a mixture of central midfield, centre-back and right-back throughout her four seasons at Brighton, but it was the latter position she had become most commonly associated with.
Since moving to Manchester, Le Tissier has been a centre-back and nothing else for the club. Two goals on her debut against Reading were particularly memorable way to begin the new chapter of her career, but she was soon cementing a reputation as one of the best defenders in England. Le Tissier was immovable as the right-side centre-back, with United keeping a WSL record 14 clean sheets and conceding only 12 times in 22 league games. It was ultimately that defensive strength which underpinned a title challenge that went until the final day of the season, while Le Tissier’s incredible block tackle on Khadija Shaw very late in the game played a huge part in a first league derby win and confirming United’s place in the Champions League for the first time.
Come the summer of 2024, and with the departure of Katie Zelem, United needed just a third captain since the 2018 reformation and Le Tissier, despite her age, was an obvious candidate. Only four months earlier she had committed her future to the club for four more years. At 22, she was younger than both Alex Greenwood, who was two months shy of turning 25, and Zelem, 23, when they inherited the armband, but it didn’t really matter because she was ready.
Le Tissier has been a leader her entire career, from youth football, first captaining England at Under-15 level. Long before being made captain this season, hers was always a voice that could be heard booming on the pitch, organising, instructing and corralling teammates. A leader by voice, but also by example. Skinner told Sky Sports on the eve of the campaign: “Maya Le Tissier is the type of player that puts everything on the line to win a game,” indicating just why she was chosen to lead the team.
While away with England this week, she reflected on how she has been shaped to be a captain. “I’m quite a mature person. I moved away from home when I was 16. My journey has made me the leader and the player I am today. I’m very grateful for my upbringing back home in Guernsey.”
It was fitting that her family were to see Le Tissier’s first game as United captain, which came at Old Trafford to open the new season. As she led her team out of the tunnel in Old Trafford’s south west corner, she glanced up at the Sir Bobby Charlton Stand where all the players’ families were seated and gave a wave up at hers, before focus returned to the 90 minutes ahead.
Given her age and hunger for football, it’s a role she could fill for a decade or more.