It is slightly after 9.20pm on a transparent August evening at Sydney’s Stadium Australia. The stands are fizzing with the power of greater than 75,000 football followers, whereas again in England, the place it’s late morning, one other 13 million persons are watching nervously on TV.
Spain are already 1-0 up in opposition to England in the Women’s World Cup closing, and have been awarded a penalty in the 69th minute. A VAR verify has confirmed a handball by the England midfielder Keira Walsh, and the Lionesses’ confidence is waning. Spain’s Jenni Hermoso steps as much as take the spot kick, and it seems as if England are heading for sure defeat. A second objective, at this stage of the sport, would kill the dream.
Except there may be one cool head on the pitch. Mary Earps, the Lionesses’ keeper, is bouncing on her line, palms on knees, gaze mounted on the ball and Hermoso. The whistle blows and Hermoso strikes; Earps dives immediately to the left and grabs the ball with each palms, throwing her physique over it. It is an ideal save. Come the closing whistle, in a sport that may nonetheless finish in loss, Earps will stroll off the pitch a hero, named goalkeeper of the match, an honour to go alongside being topped the world’s finest by Fifa in February.
Fast ahead two months and Earps is in entrance of me, on the ground of a Manchester images studio, amongst two dozen, vibrant white footballs.
The hair of the girl just lately named the world’s finest goalkeeper is pulled again in a mid-height pony. She sticks her tongue out and makes rock star indicators along with her fingers, earlier than settling considered one of the props in the palm of her gloved proper hand. “I need this for my TikTok!” she calls as much as her supervisor, taking movies on the balcony above.
Those palms and gloves – “They’re all men’s,” she says, “mine are modified” – at the moment are amongst the most well-known in football, the males’s sport included. Because if final yr’s Euros victory turned Earps and her England teammates into nationwide heroes, her efficiency at this summer season’s World Cup, together with that penalty save, ensured Earps emerged not only a star however at the high of her sport. In the weeks since her return from the World Cup, model offers have arrived from the US and Asia, and invites for style week and from executives and sports activities leaders who wish to perceive Earps’s successful mentality. There have been additionally two reported report switch bids by Arsenal, rejected by her membership, Manchester United.
Our photoshoot and interview are available in the center of a busy fortnight that has included an England sport in opposition to the Netherlands and, for United, two Super League matches and a Champions League qualifier in opposition to Paris Saint-Germain. Earps arrives straight from coaching in Uggs, black leggings and an Adidas hoodie. She is energetic, speaks rapidly and pays exacting consideration to element. Even the peak of her pony is given cautious consideration at the make-up chair – simply excessive sufficient to really feel female, simply low sufficient to look stylish.
She dances between the focus of a excessive efficiency athlete and being a self-proclaimed “goofball” on set; one minute dancing alongside to Paco Versailles’s Young in California, the subsequent pranking the stylist by letting out an “ouch” to make him suppose he’s nicked her arm as he cuts her outfit’s label. Her bigger than life character – Earps was the participant who climbed on to the press convention desk in a Lionesses conga line after England’s Euros victory – means she is as in style along with her TikTok followers (one million and counting) as she is unshakeable on the goalline.
Which is to not say her sudden fame, and the schedule that accompanies it, hasn’t come as a shock. “I’m still figuring it out,” Earps says. “The Euros was a change, then the World Cup was an even bigger change. It’s an incredible feeling – that the nation really got behind us as a team this summer, but also me, individually. I’ve never experienced support like that before. I’m trying to enjoy it for as long as it lasts.”
Hard to consider that, two years in the past, Earps was considering packing all of it in. Her United contract wasn’t paying the payments and Phil Neville – Sarina Wiegman’s predecessor as England supervisor – had dropped her from the workforce. Not solely did she consider she would by no means put on an England shirt once more, she feared the sport that had enchanted her since childhood might not maintain her, virtually or emotionally. But if life, and football, has taught Earps something, it’s that issues can change right away.
Earps was born in March 1993, the eldest of three, rising up in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire. Her dad and mom, Julie and David, ran companies in hairdressing and the meals {industry}. As a schoolgirl, she offered sweets from her rucksack – early proof of a permanent fascination with enterprise. “I was a grafter. I was always keen to forge my own path. My parents were throwing me into every activity – badminton, swimming, piano, judo, tap – and I wasn’t very good at all of it. My dad used to say, ‘Don’t knock it till you try it,’ so I’d give it a go.”
She did take pleasure in sports activities – and football was what she did for enjoyable, kicking about in the backyard along with her brother. When her dad took her to West Bridgford Colts ladies, aged 10, she was reluctant to take her flip in objective, cartwheeling between the posts in her first match till she saved a penalty and realised she was good. She might talk, too: “Relative to other young girls, I don’t think I was ever afraid to shout at my defenders.”
In the playground, she practised headers and volleys: “The boys at school were great at allowing me to join in.” Adults confirmed extra resistance. “Parents used to say to Mum and Dad, ‘Why are you letting her play football?’ I just did my own thing and stayed in my own world.”
Earps joined Leicester City’s Centre of Excellence at 14, then spent a season at Nottingham Forest. She was finding out for A-levels when she joined Doncaster Rovers Belles, incomes £25 a sport whereas nonetheless in school. That summer season, she labored six jobs to pay for boots and petrol: toy store, stationery store, two teaching jobs, telesales shifts for her dad and in a cinema the place she as soon as needed to get a colleague to complete her shift when she came upon she was beginning a match in opposition to Birmingham subsequent day.
Earps performed for England at age-group degree, and had stints at Birmingham City and Bristol Academy earlier than signing her first skilled contract, at Reading, in 2016, aged 23. That identical yr, she graduated with a 2:1 in Information Management and Business Studies from Loughborough University. If she had sway at the high of girls’s football, she says, “I’d make sure players were still able to get an education – that they didn’t have to give everything up in order to pursue a career in football. Making sure people are financially literate and have an understanding of how the world works is important.”
In 2018, she moved to German Bundesliga champions VfL Wolfsburg, adopting the quantity 27 she nonetheless wears; 1 belonged to Germany’s first keeper, Merle Frohms, as did the beginning spot, leaving Earps usually on the bench.
She signed for United the following yr and went, as England’s third-choice keeper, to the 2019 World Cup in France. The following February, Neville dropped her – briefly, she believed; come September, she was cooking and scrolling on her cellphone when she noticed a squad with 4 goalkeepers, not together with her, named for his subsequent camp. She fell to the ground and wept.
“Everything that used to make sense in my life didn’t any more,” she says. What stopped her giving all of it up? “I had to make sure I remembered what’s good in life.”
A yr later, she was out buying when the newly appointed Wiegman known as to convey her again into camp. With different keepers out injured, Earps began Wiegman’s first seven video games in cost. The coach, Earps says, “saw something in me I didn’t see in myself. I’d lost confidence. She said, ‘I’ve been watching you – just go out there and be yourself. That’s what you’ve been selected for.’ I’ll be for ever grateful for the opportunity Sarina gave me.”
In the finish, Earps performed each minute of all six video games at 2022’s Euros, conserving clear sheets in 4 of them. This summer season, Wiegman named her vice-captain. She performed England’s match with acrobatic ability and nerves of metal, shepherding them by a quarter-final penalty shootout in opposition to Nigeria and conceding simply 4 objectives throughout the match. The crowning achievement was the penalty she saved in the closing –however the workforce not occurring to attain made it bittersweet.
No matter how she tried, her devastation was clear as she went to gather her runners-up medal, then Golden Glove for the match’s finest keeper. “I remember being told I’d won it straight after the game. My response felt super practical: I didn’t want to be miserable in those photos, which I would hold for the rest of my life.”
The sport was a visual reflection of the super strides taken by the girls’s sport. The match, held in Australia and New Zealand, exceeded ticket gross sales expectations, was streamed to tens of hundreds of thousands round the globe and made family names of its stars. But the big progress of gamers resembling Earps was overshadowed by the actions of 1 man, Spanish football federation president Luis Rubiales, who sparked on the spot world outrage after the closing whistle by grabbing Hermoso and planting a kiss on her lips throughout the awards ceremony. Closer to house, expenses of tried rape, assault and controlling and coercive behaviour in opposition to then Manchester United clubmate Mason Greenwood – all denied and subsequently dropped – created one other unwelcome distraction.
While Earps received’t be drawn on both incident, there was one controversial subject she did wish to handle this summer season: the lack of duplicate girls’s goalkeeper kits. On 20 July Earps sat down in a room stuffed with reporters, as England ready to start out their World Cup marketing campaign in opposition to Haiti. “I can’t really sugar-coat this in any way, so I am not going to try,” she began, after a journalist’s query about followers being unable to purchase her shirt. “It is hugely disappointing and very hurtful.” There is a protracted observe report of producers, industry-wide, underserving goalkeeper followers. Complaining by official channels at Nike and the FA had not labored, Earps defined. So what led to her talking out, I ask. “It had been constructing for months. I’d get up day by day pondering about it. One day I’d really feel like: I’m going to talk at this time. Then I’d get up and be like: no, it’s not worth the backlash.
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Speaking up takes a lot of energy. I felt I should be using all mine to focus on the World Cup.”
Eventually, she determined, “This is too important to not speak on. I realised that as a person with my values, it would really bother me. I felt as if I was doing other goalkeepers a disservice. We deserved better.” Was she afraid of the repercussions of grumbling about a sponsor? “Naturally, you’re careful with the position that you’re in. The most important thing is the team. I didn’t want to take anything away by using our major tournament to speak about something really to do with me and goalkeeping.” She asked teammates’ opinions before speaking: “They were really, really supportive.”
Earps also has an individual contract with Adidas. “There were complications in that relationship as well, in terms of me questioning whether they supported goalkeeping 100% of the time. This was not a Nike thing. It was not me trying to pick on one brand. This was a general principle of goalkeeping is cool and goalkeepers deserve to be treated the way you treat strikers. A save should be celebrated in the same way as a goal.”
By the time she arrived home, a petition demanding Nike make a U-turn was clocking up 130,000 signatures. Nike issued a feeble statement saying it was working on solutions; Earps replied on Instagram: “@Nike is this your version of an apology/taking accountability/a powerful statement of intent?” In late August the company agreed to sell limited quantities of her shirt and, last month, spoke to Earps, privately, on the topic.
She says life and age have shown her when to speak up. “I think it’s from being in situations where you wish someone had been able to stand up for you. As you get older, you realise what is important.” Was there a moment that taught her that? “There were many – moments when I felt spoken down to and not treated fairly, in football and in life. I always said to myself, ‘If I ever have a position where I have a bit of sway or influence, I will try to use that for good and not evil.’”
Growing up, she looked up to American keeper Hope Solo: “She was the only goalkeeper on a world stage who was really known, so I used to love watching what she was doing.” In the men’s game, it was Iker Casillas, Pepe Reina and Gigi Buffon; and today, Allison, Ederson and Barcelona’s Marc-André ter Stegen. “I just love watching how everybody else does it and how unique that can be.”
She’s determined to make goalkeeping “cool”. “Kids look at how it’s perceived, they don’t want to give it a go because it’s heavily criticised, and strikers often get all the credit. I hope by me leading by example, kids can see that it is accessible and a lot of fun – you’re not part of the furniture, it’s an important position.”
In February, Earps walked on stage in Paris, dressed in a gold sequin dress and heels, to collect Fifa’s award for the world’s best women’s keeper. As she held the trophy, she told a room of greats, including Lionel Messi and Wiegman: “Sometimes success looks like this, collecting trophies; sometimes it’s just waking up and putting one foot in front of another. There’s only one of you in the world, and that’s more than good enough. Be unapologetically yourself.”
As a goalkeeper, she says, you can feel alone and misunderstood. Mental resilience is the hardest thing to learn. Even now, at the top of her game, she needs to draw on it. What gets her through? “Trying to have a life founded in gratitude has helped me get through some pretty tough times. Being able to go for a coffee or a walk or FaceTime my gran.”
She is a home bod – she keeps her house, in a smart corner of Greater Manchester, immaculate, thanks to a love of interiors and DIY. Winding down involves a bath, lighting huge candles, watching favourite movies (she’s a big Harry Potter fan) or reality TV, usually Real Housewives. Crossing off her to-do list is a day well spent – Earps is organised and highly efficient, the better to maximise energy for games. She likes the cinema and going out for dinner. The night before our chat, on Instagram, she checks into Gordon Ramsay’s Asian-inspired Lucky Cat eatery in Manchester. She doesn’t have a favourite cuisine, she says, but “I like to try restaurants I’ve not been to before”. Being recognised whenever she leaves the house has become a factor, though: “It’s different and it’s amazing, but sometimes you just want to be Mary Earps, not the footballer.”
She loves music: “upbeat stuff”, Michigan rapper NF. Her bookshelf, meanwhile, includes Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race and leadership books by Sir Alex Ferguson and former Chicago Bulls and LA Lakers head coach Phil Jackson.
“I’m always learning,” she says.
She has a portfolio of business interests, including property and a clothing line, and watches the property markets – different revenue streams, she says, so she never has to rely solely on one. “I love business, I think it’s fun. I’m not interested in living a life of luxury – just more freedom and being able to do what I want, when I want. That really motivates me.” Does that come from childhood or is it something life has taught her? “Maybe a bit of both. If you Google my worth, people have been telling me I’m worth millions. Before the World Cup, I’d have been worth about £10. Obviously, that’s not realistic but people look at your life and think you’re made, and the reality is life is just a never-ending hustle if you’re constantly trying to improve and develop.”
She owned two houses by 30. Before she went public with her criticism of Nike, she launched T-shirts, dubbed Mearps merch by fans, with “Be unapologetically yourself” and “Girls know the offside rule too” across the front, so her fans would have something to unite them. The last drop sold out in three minutes.
She has ideas for the women’s game, too: “I’d make sure there were more camera angles. I feel like we only get the same two or three, whereas in men’s football, I don’t know how many there are but it’s a lot. It’s an element of investment that people probably don’t think about but it prevents people seeing the game from different points of view.” That includes her own. “When there’s a highlight reel it’ll only usually include the goals – it won’t include saves or promising attacks. If you have a highlight reel for the men’s game, it probably lasts eight minutes; for the women’s, it lasts two or three.”
As our interview wraps up, Earps drives off into the dark drizzle of Manchester’s evening commute. If this year has felt like credit for her contribution to football, the next only promises more. She is in the running for Fifa’s The Best again, as well as the Ballon D’Or, and has already been named England’s Player of the Year.
A couple of days later, we catch up, briefly, over the phone. She is in reflective mood: “All I really want to do in life is know that I’ve given it everything I can. Regardless of the outcome, I’ve stayed true to who I am.”
Beyond that? Beyond football? “I’m not looking there yet,” Earps says. “I’m not done. I’m all in.”
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