Mayra Tatiana Ramírez Ramírez (; born 25 March 1999) is a Colombian professional footballer who plays as a striker for Women's Super League club Chelsea and the Colombia national team.
Ramírez began her career with Real Pasión in Funza and played in the first season of Colombia's professional women's league with Fortaleza CEIF in 2017, before spending 2019 with Independiente Medellín. She moved to Spain in 2020 to join Sporting de Huelva, with whom she reached the final of the 2022 Copa de la Reina, and signed for Levante in 2022, helping the club qualify for the UEFA Women's Champions League. In January 2024 she joined Chelsea for €450,000, then the highest transfer fee in women's football, and won the Women's Super League in her first season and again in 2024–25, when Chelsea also won the Women's FA Cup and the FA Women's League Cup. She received the 2024 Trofeo EFE as the best Ibero-American female player.
Ramírez made her senior debut for Colombia in 2018 and won gold at the 2019 Pan American Games. She played in the 2022 Copa América Femenina, where Colombia finished as runners-up, the quarter-finals of the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup and the 2024 Summer Olympics, and the final of the 2025 Copa América Femenina, after which she was named in the team of the tournament. In 2026 she returned from a long injury for the last two matches of the inaugural CONMEBOL Women's Nations League, which Colombia won, qualifying for the 2027 FIFA Women's World Cup.
Early life Ramírez grew up in Chacua, a rural vereda of Sibaté in Cundinamarca, on the farm of her maternal grandmother while her parents worked in a flower plantation. Football ran through her family: her mother, Liseth, had been a goalkeeper, and her father, Juan Carlos, and her uncles played microfútbol, a form of indoor football, for most of their lives. According to her family, she would run onto the pitch at half-time of her father's matches and ask the referee to lend her the ball.
She played in the street with boys and began in fútbol de salón under her first coach, Gabriel Bejarano. Ramírez has said she played in a boys' team until she was 13 or 14, when she joined Real Pasión, and her father has described her as a girl among more than twenty boys.
Youth career Ramírez joined Real Pasión, an amateur club in Funza, where she was coached by Jean Albert Martínez Camargo. The journey from Sibaté took between one and two hours each way, and she made it alone by bus, paid for with roughly 20,000 pesos a day from the shop run by her aunt; Martínez later persuaded her parents to let her live in a house he rented in Funza with the help of the local administration. At Real Pasión she won two consecutive national tournaments and the Supérate inter-school games seven times, and according to the club's own records scored more than 80 goals; her coaches developed her as a forward and goalscorer.
In 2016 she played for the Cundinamarca team that won the national women's club championship, beating Antioquia in the final, and was named the championship's top scorer. Martínez recalled that in the quarter-final against Valle she scored five second-half goals to turn a 5–0 deficit into a 6–5 win. That year she was also called up to Colombia's under-17 team for the South American Under-17 Women's Championship in Venezuela, where coach Carlos Quintero used her as a defender; according to Martínez, Colombia's only goal of the tournament came from a penalty won by Ramírez after she was moved into attack. In 2017 she won gold with Colombia's under-20 team at the Bolivarian Games.
Club career Fortaleza and Independiente Medellín (2017–2019) Through an agreement between Real Pasión and Fortaleza CEIF, Ramírez played in 2017 in the first edition of Colombia's professional women's league, in a project directed by Martínez. After remaining with Real Pasión until the end of 2018, she signed for Independiente Medellín for the 2019 season. Medellín reached the final of the 2019 league, but Ramírez missed the second leg of the semi-final against Huila and the final series against América de Cali, who won the title, through injury.
Sporting de Huelva (2020–2022) In 2020 Ramírez became one of the first members of the Colombia national team to move to Europe when she signed for Sporting de Huelva, saying before she left that she hoped to help the club climb away from the relegation places. Huelva finished 10th in the league in 2021–22 but reached the final of the Copa de la Reina, eliminating Atlético Madrid and Granadilla Tenerife on the way. Ramírez scored a penalty in the round-of-32 win over Real Oviedo on 26 January 2022 and scored again in the 2–1 win over Atlético Madrid in the round of 16 on 3 March. Barcelona won the final 6–1 on 29 May 2022.
Levante (2022–2024) Ramírez joined Levante in July 2022 on a three-year contract, remaining in Spain's top flight. She became a regular starter in her first season and formed an attacking partnership with Alba Redondo, the league's top scorer. She scored twice in a 5–0 win over Levante Las Planas on 11 February 2023, and finished the 2022–23 Liga F season with 14 goals and 11 assists in 27 league matches, the third-highest assist tally in the league, as Levante qualified for the Champions League.
Chelsea (2024–present) 2023–24 On 26 January 2024, Chelsea announced that Ramírez had signed on a four-and-a-half-year contract. Levante reported that the fee was €450,000, making her the most expensive signing in women's football at the time; further add-ons of up to €50,000 were reported.
She made her debut on 27 January 2024 in a 3–0 away win over Brighton & Hove Albion, replacing Lauren James in the second half. Her first goal, on her third appearance, was a back-heeled finish that gave Chelsea a 1–0 win over Crystal Palace in the FA Cup on 11 February, and supporters soon adopted a chant about her strength. She scored her first league goal on 3 March in a 4–0 win over Leicester City, and opened her European account in the second leg of the Champions League quarter-final against Ajax, scoring after 33 minutes of a tie Chelsea won 4–1 on aggregate. On the final day of the season, 18 May 2024, she scored two goals and provided two assists in a 6–0 win over Manchester United that gave Chelsea the WSL title.
2024–25 Under new head coach Sonia Bompastor, Ramírez started the 2024–25 season as Chelsea's first-choice striker. She scored after four minutes from a corner in a win away at Arsenal in the fourth round of the league season, and on 8 October headed her first goal of that season's Champions League in a 3–2 win over Real Madrid at Stamford Bridge. In November she broke clear of Manchester City's defence to score the first goal of a 2–0 win that took Chelsea to the top of the league, a goal later ranked third in a fan vote of the club's best goals of the season. She added a goal in a 6–1 Champions League win over Twente in December.
In January 2025 EFE presented her with the Trofeo EFE for the best Ibero-American female player of 2024 at Chelsea's Cobham training ground. On 16 February she scored the equaliser in a 2–1 comeback win over Everton, and on 15 March she opened the scoring after eight minutes of the League Cup final at Pride Park, in which Chelsea beat Manchester City 2–1.
Chelsea trailed Manchester City 2–0 after the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final, and in the second leg on 27 March Ramírez scored in the 43rd minute of a 3–0 win that sent Chelsea through 3–2 on aggregate. Barcelona eliminated Chelsea in the semi-finals. Chelsea clinched a sixth consecutive league title on 30 April 2025 with a 1–0 win at Manchester United, and completed a domestic treble on 18 May with a 3–0 win over United in the FA Cup final at Wembley, in which Ramírez started and played 62 minutes.
Ramírez was nominated for the 2024 Ballon d'Or and finished 21st with 36 points.
2025–present On 30 August 2025 Ramírez left the field after 34 minutes of a pre-season friendly against AC Milan with a hamstring injury, and Chelsea confirmed three days later that she had undergone successful surgery and would miss the rest of 2025. A return planned for early 2026 was delayed in February by a calf problem during rehabilitation, and in March Bompastor said she might not play again that season after a further setback. She returned to competitive action on 16 May 2026, in Chelsea's final league match against Manchester United, 287 days after her previous match. In August 2026 she joined Chelsea's pre-season tour of New Zealand and Australia.
International career Youth Ramírez was first called up by Colombia in 2016 for the South American Under-17 Women's Championship in Venezuela, and in 2017 won gold with the under-20 team at the Bolivarian Games.
Senior 2018–2021 Ramírez made her senior debut on 19 July 2018 in a 1–0 defeat to Costa Rica at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Barranquilla, where Colombia finished outside the medals. She scored her first international goal in a 4–0 friendly win over Peru in Lima on 8 April 2019. Later that year she won gold at the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, where Colombia beat Argentina on penalties in the final.
2022 Copa América Coach Nelson Abadía called Ramírez up for the 2022 Copa América Femenina, hosted by Colombia, on 3 July 2022. She started the opening match against Paraguay on 8 July and scored Colombia's second goal, a header, in a 4–2 win; she came on in the 58th minute of the win over Bolivia and started against Ecuador, scoring in a 2–1 win on 17 July. Colombia lost the final 1–0 to Brazil, and reaching the final secured the team's qualification for the 2023 World Cup.
2023 World Cup Ramírez was named in Colombia's squad for the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup on 4 July 2023, and played in each of her team's five matches. She started the opening 2–0 win over South Korea as the central striker, spending much of the match holding up play and helping the midfield defensively, and carried a knock to her knee from the 2–1 win over Germany through the group-stage loss to Morocco and the round-of-16 win over Jamaica, after a scan found no serious damage. Colombia, who topped their group, were eliminated in the quarter-finals by England.
2024 Olympics
On 5 July 2024 Ramírez was called up for the 2024 Summer Olympics. She started the opening 3–2 defeat to France and was sent off for a foul on Selma Bacha, which brought a two-match suspension; the Colombian federation's appeal was rejected, and she missed the 2–0 win over New Zealand and the 1–0 defeat to Canada that still carried Colombia into the knockout stage. Colombia reached the Olympic quarter-finals for the first time.
Back from suspension, Ramírez opened the scoring against Spain in Lyon on 3 August after 12 minutes, and Leicy Santos made it 2–0 shortly after half-time; Spain equalised in stoppage time of normal time and won 4–2 on penalties after a 2–2 draw.
2025 Copa América At the 2025 Copa América Femenina in Ecuador, Ramírez scored Colombia's second goal, in the 57th minute, of a 4–1 win over Paraguay on 19 July, then scored and set up two goals in an 8–0 win over Bolivia three days later. Colombia beat Argentina 5–4 on penalties after a 0–0 draw in the semi-final, which also secured qualification for the 2028 Summer Olympics. In the final against Brazil on 2 August, Ramírez scored in a 4–4 draw, and Brazil won the shoot-out 5–4. She finished the tournament with three goals and four assists, more direct goal contributions than any other Colombian, and was named in the CONMEBOL team of the tournament alongside Linda Caicedo and Katherine Tapia.
2026 Nations League