National Women’s Soccer League star Esther González is facing backlash from fans who say her decision to sign with a Saudi Women’s Premier League team is a betrayal of the LGBTQ+ community as well as her former team.
In July, González and NJ/NY Gotham FC agreed to end her contract, which was set to expire in 2027. At the time, González said she was stepping away from soccer temporarily to “attend to personal matters in Spain,” her home country, according to the BBC. But on August 23, Al-Qadsiah Saudi Women’s Football Club announced it had signed the out 33-year-old 2023 Women’s World Cup winner.
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The announcement immediately raised eyebrows among fans who questioned the circumstances around González’s departure from Gotham FC — which prevented the team from receiving a transfer fee, according to the BBC — and her decision to play for a country in which homosexuality is illegal.
One fan on X wrote that she “can’t get over esther [sic] saying she was going to temporarily retire from soccer to deal with a personal family issue and then signing with a new team whose games her wife and son cannot safely attend like three weeks later.”
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Since 2023, a section on the Saudi Tourism Authority’s Frequently Asked Questions page about whether LGBTQ+ visitors are welcome in the country has stated that “Everyone is welcome to visit Saudi.”
“We ask that visitors respect our culture and traditions and follow our laws as they would when visiting any other country in the world,” the site continues, adding that “visitors are not required to disclose their personal information, and we will respect visitors’ right to privacy.”
However, homosexuality is illegal in Saudi Arabia. According to a 2021 U.S. State Department report on the country’s human rights practices, “consensual same-sex sexual conduct is punishable by death or flogging.” It is also illegal for men “to behave like women” or to wear women’s clothes, and vice versa, according to the report.
González, meanwhile, is married to Estefanía Cruz, who gave birth to the couple’s first child in January. Following the Al-Qadsiah announcement, Spanish outlet El Mundo reported that González had deleted all photos of herself with Cruz and their baby from social media. However, as both Them and LGBTQ Nation sibling site OutSports note, some photos of González and Cruz remain visible on González’s Instagram. But an August 2025 post announcing Cruz’s pregnancy appears to have been taken down from González’s account, and Cruz’s account is now private.
Journalist Bruno Miotto described González signing with the Saudi team as “one of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen in women’s soccer.”
“It wasn’t enough with the strange departure from Gotham for ‘personal reasons,’ now she’s heading to a country that oppresses women and LGBTQIA+ people (of which she is a staunch defender),” Miotto wrote in an August 25 X post.
As Them notes, at least one out Saudi soccer fan expressed frustration with and ambivalence about González’s move, pointing to her privilege as a Western, world-renowned athlete.
“As a gay saudi [sic] woman I don’t even know how to feel about esther gonzález [sic] playing in the saudi league because its [sic] just so hypocritical to pretend that an openly gay woman who’s not white would be able to get away with this,” the fan wrote on X, adding “on the other hand I want this league to get better.”
As OutSports notes, signing González is a significant coup for Saudi Women’s Premier League, and is likely yet another effort in Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s government’s aggressive campaign to launder the country’s image and attract foreign investors and tourists. Last fall, the country hosted the high-profile Riyadh Comedy Festival, featuring Western comedians like Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., Bill Burr, Kevin Hart, Pete Davidson, Aziz Ansari, and Whitney Cummings — all of whom were criticized for taking the gig.
In 2024, FIFA announced that Saudi Arabia would host the 2034 World Cup tournament, drawing condemnation from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
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