Mary Earps on England farewells and giving back: ‘I want to leave the game in a better place than where I found it’

Mary Earps on England farewells and giving back: ‘I want to leave the game in a better place than where I found it’

Mary Earps is approached casually, calmly and with visible triumph. Someone’s sister is a goalkeeper. Cousin. Themselves. They’ve saved a goal. Two goals. A penalty. They did that thing where they leap to the right but save the shot with their left toe. One of them roared like her. 

“All of which could be a total lie,” qualifies the Paris Saint-Germain and former England No 1 as she recalls a trip to the shops in Manchester last Friday.

Earps remembers the days when no one was a goalkeeper, not in the ‘regale someone with your heroics in the shop’ sense; the ‘show off your gloves publicly’ sense.

Vignettes from before England won the 2022 European Championship are retrieved with ease, when many young goalkeepers were appointed goalkeepers by virtue of tardiness or how close one’s head reached the bar; when Earps, during more nomadic spells at Bristol Academy (now Bristol City), Reading and eventually Manchester United, attended training sessions at local clubs and the coach would implore in surreptitious whispers to “have a word with the girls. None of them want to go in goal at the weekend”.

Those days are mostly gone. Earps recalls the launch of the all-weather “Mary Earps Pitch” at Calverton Miners Welfare FC in Nottingham in February, where she spent spare minutes counting the heads of players attending the goalkeeping session on one pitch (33) and the heads of those playing pick-up on the one next to it (20), before stealing a few more minutes to count them again for surety.  

Earps’ driving purpose for years, alongside her successful playing career, has been to make women’s goalkeeping cool. It is what sat at the heart of her girls-only goalkeeping clinics in Reading and academy clinics at PSG.

It is also what led her to fight (and beat) sporting apparel giant Nike during the 2023 World Cup over the sale of women’s goalkeeping shirts, and what has driven her most recent venture, KeepHers — a programme in partnership with the charity Foundation 92 that will provide free goalkeeping sessions to girl footballers aged six to 18 in Manchester via after-school and in-school sessions. 

“There’s a stat that 80 per cent of girls in England still don’t get access to specialised goalkeeping training until late in their careers,” says Earps in a tone that is equal parts personal experience and horror. She didn’t receive technical goalkeeping training until she was 14, when she joined Leicester City’s Centre of Excellence.

“It’s not that I’m forcing goalkeeping on everyone,” says Earps with a short, deprecating laugh, “but that’s insane. It makes becoming a goalkeeper even harder.” 

Earps could talk about this all day. In fact, she only stops because of the physiological need for hydration. “Take what you want from that spiel,” she says, following an impassioned three-minute monologue about the ongoing growth of women’s goalkeeping, from the butterfly effect of goalkeeper Daphne van Domselaar’s 2023 World Cup player of the match award following the Netherlands’ last-16 win against South Africa to England’s Euro triumph last summer.

Unfiltered zeal has long been Earps’ strength. See: taking Nike to the brink or screeching “F*** off” after saving a penalty from Spain’s Jennifer Hermoso in the 2023 World Cup final.

More recently, though, it has been, if not a weakness, then an exposure; a nick in the perfection armour with which we anoint elite athletes. Donning one’s heart on one’s sleeve in some part led Earps to announce her shock retirement from international football just 36 days out from last summer’s Euros and to publish a tell-all autobiography in the subsequent months, including her emotional conversations with England manager Sarina Wiegman regarding her renewed faith in Hannah Hampton, now England’s No 1. 

It, in part, explains why when The Athletic asks Earps for the origin story of KeepHer, she laughs.

“Gosh, a long, long story. But I mean, really, how interesting is my story?” The query carries no hint of irony, despite the aforementioned autobiography chronicling that very story, or its transformation into a point of forensic dissection for fans and media alike. 

The fallout from the autobiography’s release was intense; in some corners withering (her public airing of internal squad tensions was condemned as churlish and selfish); in others illuminating (her candour about alcohol, body image and self-confidence). But the months since have compelled Earps to consider that question of her story’s interest. Or, more accurately, what is important as opposed to interesting, and where her story rests within that gamut.

“I’m very conscious of how big the world is and how small your own world is within the universe,” she says. “But equally, it’s been really clear through what I’ve been able to achieve on and off the pitch that football is a vehicle for change. You can change people’s lives.

“I’ve always wanted to leave the game in a better place than where I found it. You look at the people who came before you and think that wouldn’t have been possible without those people fighting for change. Then you look at the girls coming behind you and you feel like you’ve played your place in time. 

“But it’s become more complicated when you get thrust into the public eye. It seemed so simple five years ago. Of course, you’re not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. People aren’t always going to agree with you. That’s life, I suppose. But I think that when you go through something like that, which was very difficult and I don’t want to dive back in, it makes you realise: ‘OK, what’s really important? What do I really want to do from here?’. That was a big thing at the back end of last year. 

“And of course, you question yourself. Like, what are you doing? Should you be in the industry? Should you just say: ‘This isn’t for me. I just want a steady, quiet life’? Then it’s like: ‘No, I’m in this crazy position’. It’s a privilege at the end of the day. And I’m not perfect. I’m always going to get things wrong at different times. But I also think that’s a really beautiful thing, to continue to show up when you’re not perfect.

“Hopefully then, when I do creep off for a quiet life, at some point in time I can look back and be really proud of the kids playing on the Mary Earps pitch and everybody going to the KeepHers sessions.” 

Earps says the last sentence with a smile, but she does intend, one day, to “creep off”.

“When you get to this stage, you know you’re here for a good time, not a long time,” she says. While still one of the game’s most imposing characters, at 33, her quality has ebbed at times. This season, Earps has conceded 18 goals from an expected goals on target (xGOT ) of 13.20, according to Fotmob. 

Earps’ contract with PSG, who sit third in France’s Division 1 Feminine, 15 points off leaders Lyon, expires this summer. She plays coy on her next location — “If I told you, I’d have to kill you, James Bond style,” she quips — but there is no doubt she will continue competing. 

“Until the wheels fall off. Until the mind and body say: ‘Absolutely not, we’re done’.” 

The international break affords Earps time to attend a farewell tribute from the Football Association before England’s World Cup qualifier against Spain at Wembley on Tuesday night, in honour of her retirement last May.

The length of time between retirement and the tribute boiled down to scheduling conflicts, Earps says. But despite the time that has passed, how she will be received remains to be seen. In November, when she returned to England for PSG’s 2-1 Champions League group-stage defeat to her former club, Manchester United, smatterings of boos mingled with applause.

Earps, understandably, is unsure how Tuesday’s tribute will unfold. Her own emotions are complicated. The last time she attended Wembley in a football capacity (technically, she has been back since for an Oasis concert) was England’s 1-0 win against Spain in the Nations League last February. That Tuesday’s match will be against the same opponents represents a full-circle moment, albeit one that has left Earps on the other side of the circle’s boundaries.

“Alessia (Russo) texted this morning, actually, trying to figure out how I’m going to see her now that we’re on opposite sides (of that circle),” Earps says. “There’s security. So it’s like: ‘How are we going to meet?’ How am I going to see her family?’. It’s very complicated, actually.”

None of which speaks to the emotions of the occasion, which will see Earps return to a team that felt, at a time, almost synonymous with her image. 

“We all know by now I wear my heart on my sleeve,” Earps adds. “But I have no idea how it’s going to be, truth be told. Wembley is obviously an incredible place where I’ve got so many amazing memories, and Spain, a team that we’ve gone to war with so many times and have so many incredible memories as well. It felt like the perfect game.

“I’m looking forward to it, but I’m not very good at emotional things. So we’ll see, but I hope it will just be a special day.” 

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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