by There was a moment on Tuesday night when Mary Earps, standing next to the shiny trophy that crowned the Queen of British sports for 2023, realized that she could not bring herself to look her parents in the eye because of the emotions that flooded Back.
In that moment, during the most celebrated seconds of her career so far, a reminder of their support on her path to winning the hearts of the nation, intertwined in her own words, with some “not so great times , Seriously” .
Earps is seen by millions of new women’s football fans as the social media sensation who saves penalties, shouts widely, with more than a million TikTok followers who won Euro 2022 with her England counterparts and reached the final of the Cup This year’s World Cup, which forced sportswear giant Nike into a U-turn to sell women’s goalkeeper kits.
But her journey to BBC Sports Personality of the Year is a return that didn’t seem remotely possible just two and a half years ago. Before England came back under Sarina Wiegman, Earps found herself at the thought of never playing for her country again.
After the 2019 World Cup, she started in a friendly at Wembley against Germany, wearing the No. 1 for a long time. But Earps was suddenly left out of England head coach Phil Neville’s squad for the 2020 SheBelieves Cup and then – after the pandemic games gap – was omitted from the Lioness squad in February 2021 by interim manager Hege Riise. It would be almost two years without playing for the national team before Wiegman remembered her in September 2021 and changed her life.
It was during that time in the international football wilderness that Earps spoke of being in a “dark place”, saying, while collecting her Fifa Goalkeeper of the Year award in February 2023: “Thank you so much to my family who pointed out. I picked myself up from the kitchen floor to be here today, not tonight specifically, but a few years ago. this [award] is for anyone who has ever been in a dark place – know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Be yourself without excuse.”
One source told Telegraph Sport that what Earps went through in those times was ‘very personal’ and private for the 30-year-old, and has yet to elaborate on the exact nature of Earps’ low points.
But when asked about the moment in her life backstage at the Spoty ceremony on Tuesday, the World Cup Golden Glove Award winner said: “I made peace with the fact that I would never be an England player again. That’s where it was for me. They were the facts. It took me a while to come to terms with that.
“It’s a hard pill to swallow when it’s what you’ve always dreamed of. Sometimes you give it your all and you’re not good enough but luckily Sarina Wiegman came in and I saw things in me that I didn’t see in myself. I didn’t know how long it would be [for] at that point so I’m so glad she gave me a chance. I want to continue as long as I can.”
Since getting that chance, Earps has hit the ground running and shows no sign of letting go, benefiting from a long and well-traveled career playing for clubs including Doncaster Rovers Belles , Birmingham City and Bristol City, before she arrived. she moved to Germany for a season at Wolfsburg which would greatly help her transformation between the sticks.
Now on the front pages of UK newspapers and at the top of the sporting world, she insists she won’t stop until she has a trophy cabinet full. “I want to win the lottery,” she said Tuesday night. “One day it would be my absolute dream to win the Champions League and the World Cup, that would be amazing.”
The immediate follow-up question was, naturally, which club she hopes to play for when she makes that bid for Champions League glory, after an autumn in which her future was at current club Manchester United is the subject of much speculation. Earps’ current contract expires next summer and she was the target of a transfer bid from Arsenal during the World Cup, which United rejected. Her club is understood to have said Earps was not for sale.
“It’s a great question,” Earps said. “I don’t want to talk too much about tonight because I want to celebrate this win but what I will say is that there are a lot of things that have been put out there that are not true. I stayed quiet for a reason. I feel that I have managed to conduct myself professionally and honestly through this whole situation. What I will say is that I play with heart and passion in everything I do and I drive standards.
“A lot of things that have been put out are not true. I want to say more but I can’t at this point and it is very difficult for me to sit quietly, when I see many things that are not right. I think it’s unfair but I know the right thing to do is focus on my football and see what happens from there.”
Earps did not specify what she was referring to as a factual inaccuracy, but her words came after reports that she was keen to leave United. What is clear is that, whoever she plays for in the future, their commercial gain could be almost as significant as the talent she provides between the sticks. After being voted by the public to win the most prestigious annual ‘sports personality’ award and Nike promising her never to omit her shirt from their sales again, the age of Mary, Queen of Stop.
