Khadija Shaw wins Football Writers' Association women's player of the year

Shaw is leading the WSL's Golden Boot race for the third year in a row Carl Recine/Getty Images Share articleManchester City’s Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw has won the Football Writers’ Association women’s player of the year for the 2025-26 season. It is the second time in three years that the forward has taken the award, either side of Alessia Russo’s win in 2024-25. Russo finished second while Chelsea’s Lauren James was third after a vote of the FWA’s more than 900 members. Shaw, 29, won her first Women’s Super League title on Wednesday, after Arsenal dropped points to Brighton & Hove Albion, and is the league’s leading scorer on 19 goals. With seven more goals than Aston Villa’s Kirsty Hanson in second, if Shaw wins the 2026 Golden Boot it will be the third consecutive campaign that she has finished as the WSL’s top scorer. Last season she shared the Golden Boot with Russo despite playing seven fewer games than the Arsenal forward. Amid her on-field success, the Jamaica international’s future looks set to be away from City with her contract expiring in the summer and negotiations over fresh terms breaking down. The Athletic reported in April that Chelsea had offered Shaw a £1million ($1.4m) per year contract. Shaw has started every WSL game for City this year, scoring 19 goals and providing four assists as they won their first title in a decade. Her goal haul includes the quickest hat-trick in WSL history during March’s win against Tottenham Hotspur, and four goals in December’s victory over Aston Villa. Manchester United’s Bruno Fernandes is the winner of the men’s award. Analysis by women’s football writer Megan Feringa Welcome to the year of the Bunny. Shaw that is. At 29 years old, it’s belated that the Jamaica striker is finally being recognised as the generational talent she is, that her days as the season trundles to a close are busied by learning how to best balance various pieces silverware in her arms without bruising as clubs around the globe attempt to cajole her into signing on their dotted line. Since moving to the WSL in 2021 from Bordeaux, Shaw has established herself as one of women’s football’s most lethal goalscorers. But for years, Shaw was limited to this one-dimensional tag: City’s goal-glutton but one lacking the finer points of an all-around forward. Over the past two seasons, Shaw hasn’t just challenged these (often incorrect) critiques but transcended them. She has honed her touch, her passing, her link-up play, the runs she makes to open up space for her teammates. That her goalscoring has only improved (three years after becoming the first WSL player to score three hat-tricks in a calendar year, she scored the WSL’s fastest hat-trick at 12 minutes and 37 seconds) is testament to just how impressive a total forward she is. There are (yes) areas of improvement. Shaw’s insatiable appetite to be the best is rivalled only by her desire to do everything to achieve that. Which should scare you. Of what exactly is a better version of Shaw capable? How do you stop that version? Should you even try? They are questions with which to reckon in the summer, as is Shaw’s future as she potentially enters free agency. Shaw will likely (and rightly) accrue an era-defining wage, fitting for a player who is regularly setting an era-defining bar for what the best can achieve. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms