5 hours ago
1
“I’ve learned a lot about what truly matters in life,” Mary Earps says on a quiet and cloudy afternoon as, at Paris Saint-Germain’s training centre on the outskirts of the French capital, the former England goalkeeper reflects on the achievements and drama of her last five years. “My life has accidentally come into the court of public opinion. People talking about your performance comes with the territory but when it starts to become about your character, and assumptions people make about you, that can be really, really challenging.”
Between 2020 and 2023 Earps overcame depression, a drinking problem, eating issues, won the Euros with England, forced Nike to change their attitude to female goalkeepers, saved a penalty in a World Cup final and won the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year.
Since then she has been surprised by Sarina Wiegman, England’s manager, recalling Hannah Hampton after previously removing the young keeper from the squad. Earps believes Hampton’s attitude and behaviour disrupted the harmonious atmosphere among the goalkeepers before England won the Euros in 2022. She felt let down and describes Wiegman’s usual clarity and direct communication becoming opaque and distant as the manager wavered over selecting Earps or Hampton.
Amid turmoil and distress Earps retired from international football this year. She then faced “multiple character assassinations” from people who assumed her ego could not bear being replaced as England’s No 1.
Earps stayed silent while she watched England win the Euros this summer, with Hampton playing a starring role, and she has now found peace without international football.
“At first I found it difficult because of this great sense of injustice I have,” Earps says with a light laugh that belies the strength of her feelings. “I was like: ‘Gosh, I can’t believe this is what people think about me. It’s so far from the truth.’ Sometimes it made me question myself: ‘Is that really how I am?’ But now I try to have as much of a thick skin as I can. I don’t think you survive without it.”
Earps’s new autobiography, serialised in the Guardian, is a deep cut above the usual sporting celebrity book. It is stark, authentic and crammed with startling revelations. When I ask her which parts of the book make her feel the most emotional Earps says: “Those pages about being bullied …”
As “the girl who played football” she “was often alone”. On one occasion a girl who was two years older than Earps, instructed a friend to “slap her”. Earps fought back “and they chased me round the school till I found sanctuary in the PE department office. It was horrifying.”
She was sustained by her family and a burning obsession to become a great goalkeeper. Earps also grew used to the harsh coaching regime at junior England camps where, during one-on-one sessions, “I felt like the sole ambition was to make me cry.”
Coaches also made casual remarks about her weight with numbing regularity. Earps felt isolated until, in later years, some of her England teammates shared similarly jarring experiences.
“The world has changed,” she asserts calmly. “It just wouldn’t happen now. But it’s a part of who I am and with me struggling at school, and never feeling liked or accepted, [the remarks about her weight] really compounded that. It definitely amplified a thing in my head of never being good enough. That [knocks] your self-esteem as a young person.”
The book captures Earps living alone, “with death counts mounting”, during the first Covid lockdown, “shovelling down biscuits instead of meals” and binge-drinking vodka.
She was “annihilating my fitness” and her worry “about being big and bulky was back with an angry vengeance.”
Was she scared? “I don’t think I had enough energy to be concerned for myself. That probably sounds really ugly but I was navigating a very difficult and dark time. I don’t look back and recognise that person, who didn’t have any zest for life. I’m just grateful I found my way out because not everybody does.”
Earps is warm and often amusing company and it seems incongruous we should discuss such painful memories when she remains one of the world’s best and most highly paid female keepers. “I try to speak honestly because in social media everything looks glitz and glamour all the time. We should be open and have that sense of humanity and community the world is losing.”
She never came close to trying to take her life but Earps admits she thought of how she might end it. This happened, she says, “more often than I would have liked”.
Two years later Earps would be the best goalkeeper at the Euros and help England win the tournament. Another year on, in 2023, she won the Golden Glove at the World Cup – where England lost to Spain in the final. Earps also stood up to Nike when the corporate giant failed to make her goalkeeper’s jersey available as a replica kit. It appeared to be institutionalised sexism and Earps says: “I just recognised something wrong and I’ve got a really strong sense of injustice.”
She smiles. “I always feel like I’m sticking my head above the parapet – it’s a recurring theme. It’s about being unapologetically myself and standing up for what I believe in.”
At a pre-World Cup media day she was asked about Nike’s lack of interest in female goalkeepers. Her reply sparked a campaign which forced the company to apologise and make amends. “My proudest achievement is not the result,” Earps says. “It’s the fact I had the courage to answer honestly. The alternative, which seems crazy, was to say nothing. Or I could have complained to Nike privately and nothing would have happened. But because I answered the question, the public pressure and my performances created this change.”
Earps’s transformation from her lowest point had been helped enormously by Wiegman’s arrival as England manager in 2021. She felt trusted by Wiegman who made her feel “invincible” while “she constructively tried to always challenge me. I felt like I could be honest while she always had my back.”
In 2022, Earps writes: “Sarina took absolutely no nonsense when it came to bad behaviour and created a culture where it would be addressed head-on to the point of isolating or removing people from the camp who wouldn’t adhere … Non-collegiate behaviour was not tolerated. We came back to the news that Hannah had been dropped from the squad: her behaviour behind the scenes at the Euros had frequently risked derailing training sessions and team resources. ”
Earps describes how Wiegman “would stand in front of everyone and say: ‘This is the situation. This is why this person is not training. This person needs to be managed.’ That gave everyone real clarity.”
I ask Earps to offer some examples of how Hampton, allegedly, undermined the “collegiate” atmosphere. “I don’t want to go into the specifics because it’s not my place. I don’t want to speak badly about anybody else either. But unfortunately this played a part in my Euros experience and England situation.”
Pressed to explain more, Earps says: “I think we had different ideas of what being a teammate should be. I think there was a mismatch, a misalignment, of values.”
Did Earps discuss her misgivings with Hampton? “There was a lot of conversation and a lot of effort to try and [change] the situation. I took my role as a leader very seriously and always wanted the goalkeeper group to be as harmonious as possible. I’d experienced non-harmonious goalkeeper groups and didn’t feel that brought the best out of people. I have a real affinity for goalkeepers … and I can’t speak highly enough of [Ellie] Roebuck and the way she helped me at the Euros. She messaged me yesterday to say I should go on The Traitors. I told her I’d be a terrible traitor because I’m a terrible liar.
“You’ve got to give a lot of credit to Roebuck because [as the former No 1] she could have been awful to me. She could have been an arsehole – pardon the French. But she wasn’t. It not just about what she gave me, but also what she gave the team. It’s a really tricky role and she did it incredibly well.”
after newsletter promotion
Was Hampton a supportive backup during the 2022 Euros? “I don’t know how to answer that.” Earps eventually adds: “We had a different idea of what being a teammate looked like … the goalkeeper dynamic was professional throughout and was difficult sometimes. I wish that it wasn’t, but I genuinely wish her and the team well. She is a very good goalkeeper and I’ve tried to draw a line under all that. I have messaged her privately to say: ‘Look, no bad blood.’”
Her relationship with Wiegman deteriorated after the manager’s turn towards Hampton. Wiegman said “everyone deserves a second chance” but it was troubling to Earps that the atmosphere towards her became “neutral” and far less communicative than before. The unspoken changes left Earps feeling “like a frog that had been placed in tepid water with the heat gradually turned up”.
Earps details “an energy shift” between her and Wiegman. “It felt like something was off. You can’t put your finger on it and there’s nothing majorly wrong, like no one’s speaking to you in a crazy way or being mean to you. But you just feel this isn’t how it used to be.”
Wiegman appeared to have lost her usual clarity and direct way of communicating and, Earps says: “It was an unusual experience for me and also the squad. It was difficult for everybody.”
The manager finally explained that Hampton’s distribution skills were superior but she told Earps she wouldn’t accept her retirement. Earps agreed reluctantly to stay for the Euros only to revert to her original decision when she concluded that Wiegman no longer followed her closely at PSG.
If Wiegman had been transparent at the outset would Earps have remained with the squad? “I don’t know how those conversations would have gone. But a big dynamic at play was making the situation untenable.”
In a public statement Wiegman said she was disappointed in Earps. She also had to be nudged by Lucy Bronze to say a few words when Earps left the squad. “I don’t think you should get into who’s right and who’s wrong,” Earps says. “We’d had a relationship that spanned the best part of four years. I still have a tremendous amount of respect [for Wiegman].”
Earps “felt like I’d been trudging and troopering on, and I’d been so vulnerable, at times in tears. I just wanted to look back and celebrate what had been. We both could have done that. It caused unnecessary bad feeling for no reason.”
She sounds composed and without bitterness: “The manager always has the right to make whatever decision for the greater good of the team. Ultimately, she’s won three back-to-back Euros and is incredibly successful. I don’t look back with bad blood. I can give my point of view but also give credit where it’s due. It worked out well for everybody. The team went on and won the second Euros back-to-back, an incredible achievement. Sarina won her third, and I took care of myself mentally and physically and chose to end my international career on my terms, a little bit.”
Earps found the knockout stages of the Euros “difficult to watch, but I genuinely loved it. I’ve got fantastic friends there, friends I hope remain for the rest of my life. It feels like family.”
She also negotiated painful terrain with her own family. During the last World Cup she made a strong decision to support her partner, Kitty, who overheard Earps’s parents talking dubiously about their relationship. Kitty lives with Earps in Paris and the goalkeeper’s face lights up: “She’s tells me the unadulterated truth. She’s a great person to have in my corner.”
Did her parents struggle with Earps’s sexuality? “Definitely at the beginning there were elements of that. People make mistakes and hurt you – but the strength of relationships comes from navigating those moments. We talked and worked through it.”
Earps has frozen her eggs, in the hope of becoming a mother one day, as she wants to play for PSG as long as she can. She loves Paris and rocks in delight: “I call the Eiffel Tower ‘Eileen’ and get so excited.”
Come on, Eileen? “Exactly. That’s what I say to her when she’s about to start flashing. I feel very lucky that I live in such a beautiful place after all I’ve been through, the highs and lows. You get caught up in that and in chasing the next trophy and next objective. I still have that hunger to achieve so much at such a fantastic club but you take stock and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this a beautiful, beautiful city?’ It’s given me a different perspective on the urgency of life.”
Earps cackles. “I’m 32 now, don’t look a day over 18! I’m going to play as long as I can, because I bloody love this game.”
Serenity, as much as certainty, courses through her now. “This is a real home away from home. It’s a really relaxed lifestyle and I can focus on football and maximise every last bit of potential I have in me before, unfortunately, the legs give out.”
Earps looks up and, after a thoughtful pause, she says: “Every season is sacred now.”
Mary Earps: All In by Mary Earps (Bonnier Books, £22). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123, or email [email protected] or [email protected]. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
