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When 17-year-old soccer phenom Racheal Kundananji tried out for the Zambian national team in 2018, she wasn’t going to let the discomfort of her borrowed cleats faze her. 

Too big and laced as tight as possible, the secondhand shoes flopped a little with each stride. The pair was better than the alternative; her previous, too-small cleats had split at the seams. The boots Kundananji used were good enough to carry her through training — and launch her onto the world stage.

Now 25, Bay FC’s standout striker ranks among the most valuable signings in women’s professional soccer history. Ahead of its inaugural season in 2024, Bay FC paid upward of $780,000 to acquire Kundananji from Madrid CFF, making her the face of the expansion franchise and marking the highest transfer fee ever paid in the women’s game. 

Now, Kundananji no longer borrows anything.

Wearing custom Nike cleats, Kundananji has carved out a career unlike anyone else in the National Women’s Soccer League. There was the hat-trick against Ghana in a pre-Olympic friendly ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Games, a crucial strike to seal a victory over Costa Rica on the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup stage, and 33 goals in 43 appearances while in Madrid. 

Since arriving in Northern California, Kundananji has failed to live up to her transfer fee, scoring just nine goals in 45 matches. The striker has taken the second-most shots in the NWSL this season with 54, but is fifth in shots on target with 25, and tied for 21st in the league in goals with just four. 

Kundananji is trying to help a Bay FC team that’s 13th out of 14 NWSL clubs in the standings turn around a lost season, but hers isn’t the only team she’s trying to boost. 

Earlier this year, when girls from an Oakland-based Soccer Without Borders Under-14 club came to watch Kundananji at PayPal Park in San Jose, they saw a player who’s considered one of the best-of-the-best. When Kundananji looked back at them, she saw herself. “In my journey, we lacked almost everything,” she said: “We would train with only one soccer ball, you had no soccer shoes on a field where there’s no grass.” 

Soccer Without Borders is a Bay Area nonprofit that provides access to soccer for underserved youth. “We want to break down any and every barrier, whether that means getting [kids] to the field by giving them rides, bringing shin guards, bringing donated cleats, kits, and socks,” said Mariyam Qadirriya Muhammad, coach of Soccer Without Borders’ U14 team.

For the adolescent girls on the U14 team, meeting Kundananji wasn’t just about watching greatness, it was about feeling seen by it. When she offered to design and create brand new, custom kits for the team — that had been without their own jerseys for four years — she wanted the players involved in the process.

“Racheal was so intentional about this campaign — it didn’t even feel like just a campaign,” Qadirriya Muhammad said. “Racheal invited the girls to a Bay FC training, made time for them, and connected with them. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to be so close to such a great player.”

In her own childhood, Kundananji knew what it meant to see great players from a distance and believe, even without resources, that she could one day stand among them.

“That player has two legs, I also have two legs. They can run, I can run. They can do this, I can do this,” said Kundananji, who recalled watching the Premier League from afar while playing on dirt fields in Zambia. 

That mindset carried her into highlight reels, across continents, and into record books. Bay FC head coach Albertin Montoya, who announced he will step down at the end of the season last month, still sees that sense of joy in his striker everyday. 

“She deserves all the accolades that came her way because it all comes from the heart. It’s so pure,” he said. “We are just delighted to have her, not just for what she does on the pitch, but for the energy and joy she brings off of it.” 

That passion — the kind that kept her barefoot, playing among crowds of young boys growing up — is what she now passes on to underserved soccer communities both globally and locally in her new home in the Bay Area. 

Soccer Without Borders exists to help young people break barriers. And Kundananji exists as proof that those barriers can be kicked down. Whether you’re barefoot, wearing borrowed cleats, or clad in custom shoes. 

“My mind was just to do what I love,” Kundananji said. “And being a champion is not just about winning trophies, it’s how many souls you’ve helped.”