Earps reaction and what it says about role models in women’s sport

Everyone should take accountability for the choices they make and the consequences. That’s just how it should be.

I also think we want these archetypal angels in women’s sport, who are role models, do everything perfectly and say all the right things. But women’s football and sport wouldn’t be where it is if no-one put their head above the parapet and ripped up the rule book.

That is a lot of pressure – to be someone that can have no flaws at all. Everyone is multi-dimensional and people will get things wrong.

It’s really unfortunate that for whatever reason, Mary Earps decided to write an autobiography and release it now while she’s still an active player, as well as the timing of it.

It’s made a lot of people feel very uncomfortable, uneasy and sad about how it’s all unravelled because it has put two players in the spotlight – Mary and Hannah Hampton – that many have played with and enjoyed seeing their rise to the top. We’ve all felt part of their journeys and in the success that they have brought to the Lionesses.

This situation seems to have questioned the notions we have of what a role model is in women’s football. It feels like it’s a shattering of that bubble which has amounted to all this reaction.

People have different ways of handling hurt, pressure, transition or changes to their role or position within the team.

I understand why Mary felt the need to use this autobiography to tell her side of the story, to close a chapter metaphorically on her England career, but it sits very uncomfortably with me to not recognise the impact that this could have on Hampton and manager Sarina Wiegman.

There is a collective, unwritten understanding that what transpires within a team, stays in the team. That’s how you build trust and respect. You don’t have to love each other all the time but you respect each other.

Why public image matters now

It has made me think about how we are positioning successful women who want to be the authentic self that Mary has spoken about. Do we hold women to a certain standard in terms of how they should handle their feelings?

We have been so protective over women’s football in England for such a long time, making sure there’s no negativity within every aspect of the game. Now there is more scrutiny. Players are going to have to be more adept with their public image and optics. These things matter now, in a way that they didn’t matter, perhaps, before.

When I have come across former USA players, they don’t necessarily have the same perspectives as we do in the UK. They are used to confronting direct personalities that speak on things, whether they agree with it or not.

Mary is not the first sportsperson to release an autobiography that criticises others or has a perspective on how they feel they’ve been treated. If you are putting things into the public domain, you have to expect that you will get responses to that. But it feels as though she was unprepared for the reaction.

Would I have released a book like that while still playing? Probably not. That’s a choice Mary has made with advice from people around her.

A book is going to be very revealing. It’s unveiled things that most of us were not privy to in terms of her state of mind, the things that she was experiencing from an emotional position, her relationship with others in the team, and of course, in this case, Hannah Hampton. All of that is going to be a vulnerable place to put herself in.

Wiegman has managed personalities

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It would be ridiculous to suggest that there have never been teams where 23 players don’t get along perfectly. Especially at the elite level, when you’re dealing with pressure, expectation and competition for spots.

I’ve played in squads where if you didn’t conform, you would either never be called back again or would never have got there in the first place. So you have to credit Wiegman because she has been able to manage different personalities, given them room to grow, and allowed them to re-enter the England squad.

Ultimately, Mary is a top, professional athlete who clearly has had challenges navigating her newfound chapter outside of international football. The machine around her, which is now part of the women’s football ecosystem, has sadly been mishandled.

The biggest lessons that we can all take is that everyone is accountable for their mistakes or their choices, but nobody should receive abuse because of their perspective or their experience.

    • 2 days ago
Ellen White, Jen Beattie and Ben Haines

Related topics

  • England Women’s Football Team
  • Football
  • Women’s Football

More on this story

Earps reaction and pressures on female role models – Asante verdict

Everyone should take accountability for the choices they make and the consequences. That’s just how it should be.

I also think we want these archetypal angels in women’s sport, who are role models, do everything perfectly and say all the right things. But women’s football and sport wouldn’t be where it is if no-one put their head above the parapet and ripped up the rule book.

That is a lot of pressure – to be someone that can have no flaws at all. Everyone is multi-dimensional and people will get things wrong.

It’s really unfortunate that for whatever reason, Mary Earps decided to write an autobiography and release it now while she’s still an active player, as well as the timing of it.

It’s made a lot of people feel very uncomfortable, uneasy and sad about how it’s all unravelled because it has put two players in the spotlight – Mary and Hannah Hampton – that many have played with and enjoyed seeing their rise to the top. We’ve all felt part of their journeys and in the success that they have brought to the Lionesses.

This situation seems to have questioned the notions we have of what a role model is in women’s football. It feels like it’s a shattering of that bubble which has amounted to all this reaction.

People have different ways of handling hurt, pressure, transition or changes to their role or position within the team.

I understand why Mary felt the need to use this autobiography to tell her side of the story, to close a chapter metaphorically on her England career, but it sits very uncomfortably with me to not recognise the impact that this could have on Hampton and manager Sarina Wiegman.

There is a collective, unwritten understanding that what transpires within a team, stays in the team. That’s how you build trust and respect. You don’t have to love each other all the time but you respect each other.

Why public image matters now

It has made me think about how we are positioning successful women who want to be the authentic self that Mary has spoken about. Do we hold women to a certain standard in terms of how they should handle their feelings?

We have been so protective over women’s football in England for such a long time, making sure there’s no negativity within every aspect of the game. Now there is more scrutiny. Players are going to have to be more adept with their public image and optics. These things matter now, in a way that they didn’t matter, perhaps, before.

When I have come across former USA players, they don’t necessarily have the same perspectives as we do in the UK. They are used to confronting direct personalities that speak on things, whether they agree with it or not.

Mary is not the first sportsperson to release an autobiography that criticises others or has a perspective on how they feel they’ve been treated. If you are putting things into the public domain, you have to expect that you will get responses to that. But it feels as though she was unprepared for the reaction.

Would I have released a book like that while still playing? Probably not. That’s a choice Mary has made with advice from people around her.

A book is going to be very revealing. It’s unveiled things that most of us were not privy to in terms of her state of mind, the things that she was experiencing from an emotional position, her relationship with others in the team, and of course, in this case, Hannah Hampton. All of that is going to be a vulnerable place to put herself in.

Wiegman has managed personalities

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.

It would be ridiculous to suggest that there have never been teams where 23 players don’t get along perfectly. Especially at the elite level, when you’re dealing with pressure, expectation and competition for spots.

I’ve played in squads where if you didn’t conform, you would either never be called back again or would never have got there in the first place. So you have to credit Wiegman because she has been able to manage different personalities, given them room to grow, and allowed them to re-enter the England squad.

Ultimately, Mary is a top, professional athlete who clearly has had challenges navigating her newfound chapter outside of international football. The machine around her, which is now part of the women’s football ecosystem, has sadly been mishandled.

The biggest lessons that we can all take is that everyone is accountable for their mistakes or their choices, but nobody should receive abuse because of their perspective or their experience.

    • 2 days ago
Ellen White, Jen Beattie and Ben Haines

Related topics

  • England Women’s Football Team
  • Football
  • Women’s Football

More on this story

Earps reaction ‘shows pressure on women to be perfect angels’

Everyone should take accountability for the choices they make and the consequences. That’s just how it should be.

I also think we want these archetypal angels in women’s sport, who are role models, do everything perfectly and say all the right things. But women’s football and sport wouldn’t be where it is if no-one put their head above the parapet and ripped up the rule book.

That is a lot of pressure – to be someone that can have no flaws at all. Everyone is multi-dimensional and people will get things wrong.

It’s really unfortunate that for whatever reason, Mary Earps decided to write an autobiography and release it now while she’s still an active player, as well as the timing of it.

It’s made a lot of people feel very uncomfortable, uneasy and sad about how it’s all unravelled because it has put two players in the spotlight – Mary and Hannah Hampton – that many have played with and enjoyed seeing their rise to the top. We’ve all felt part of their journeys and in the success that they have brought to the Lionesses.

This situation seems to have questioned the notions we have of what a role model is in women’s football. It feels like it’s a shattering of that bubble which has amounted to all this reaction.

People have different ways of handling hurt, pressure, transition or changes to their role or position within the team.

I understand why Mary felt the need to use this autobiography to tell her side of the story, to close a chapter metaphorically on her England career, but it sits very uncomfortably with me to not recognise the impact that this could have on Hampton and manager Sarina Wiegman.

There is a collective, unwritten understanding that what transpires within a team, stays in the team. That’s how you build trust and respect. You don’t have to love each other all the time but you respect each other.

Why public image matters now

It has made me think about how we are positioning successful women who want to be the authentic self that Mary has spoken about. Do we hold women to a certain standard in terms of how they should handle their feelings?

We have been so protective over women’s football in England for such a long time, making sure there’s no negativity within every aspect of the game. Now there is more scrutiny. Players are going to have to be more adept with their public image and optics. These things matter now, in a way that they didn’t matter, perhaps, before.

When I have come across former USA players, they don’t necessarily have the same perspectives as we do in the UK. They are used to confronting direct personalities that speak on things, whether they agree with it or not.

Mary is not the first sportsperson to release an autobiography that criticises others or has a perspective on how they feel they’ve been treated. If you are putting things into the public domain, you have to expect that you will get responses to that. But it feels as though she was unprepared for the reaction.

Would I have released a book like that while still playing? Probably not. That’s a choice Mary has made with advice from people around her.

A book is going to be very revealing. It’s unveiled things that most of us were not privy to in terms of her state of mind, the things that she was experiencing from an emotional position, her relationship with others in the team, and of course, in this case, Hannah Hampton. All of that is going to be a vulnerable place to put herself in.

Wiegman has managed personalities

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.

It would be ridiculous to suggest that there have never been teams where 23 players don’t get along perfectly. Especially at the elite level, when you’re dealing with pressure, expectation and competition for spots.

I’ve played in squads where if you didn’t conform, you would either never be called back again or would never have got there in the first place. So you have to credit Wiegman because she has been able to manage different personalities, given them room to grow, and allowed them to re-enter the England squad.

Ultimately, Mary is a top, professional athlete who clearly has had challenges navigating her newfound chapter outside of international football. The machine around her, which is now part of the women’s football ecosystem, has sadly been mishandled.

The biggest lessons that we can all take is that everyone is accountable for their mistakes or their choices, but nobody should receive abuse because of their perspective or their experience.

    • 2 days ago
Ellen White, Jen Beattie and Ben Haines

Related topics

  • England Women’s Football Team
  • Football
  • Women’s Football

More on this story

Hamas returns another Israeli captive’s body as Gaza suffers aid shortages

Hamas has returned another body of a deceased captive to Israel as Palestinians across the Gaza Strip brace for cold winter months amid a lack of adequate shelter, food and other critical supplies.

The Palestinian group announced on Wednesday that it was returning the remains of an Israeli captive via the International Committee of the Red Cross.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office later confirmed the transfer, which now leaves six captives’ remains still in Gaza.

The return of the bodies has been a major sticking point in the United States-brokered ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel, with the latter accusing the Palestinian group of violating the deal by not releasing all the remains.

But Hamas says retrieval efforts have been complicated by the widespread destruction in Gaza, as well as by Israeli restrictions on the entry of heavy machinery and bulldozers to help with the search.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh reported that the body returned on Wednesday was retrieved after four days of digging through the rubble in the eastern Gaza City neighbourhood of Shujayea.

The area “has been under the control and operation of the Israeli army for months”, said Odeh, explaining that an Egyptian team of experts took part in the effort.

She added that Israel has made clear that “it will not deliver on its commitments in phase one of the ceasefire agreement” – including the free flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza – until all the bodies are returned.

Separately, the Israeli army killed two Palestinians in central Gaza, claiming that they crossed the ceasefire’s yellow line near Israeli positions.

Gaza health authorities said Israeli fire also killed a Palestinian collecting firewood in central Gaza, the Reuters news agency reported.

‘A sham truce’

The United Nations warned earlier this week that while aid deliveries have increased since the ceasefire came into effect in October, the amount of food and other assistance getting into the territory remains insufficient.

“We need full access. We need everything to be moving fast,” Abeer Etefa, a senior spokesperson for the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), told reporters on Tuesday.

“We are in a race against time. The winter months are coming. People are still suffering from hunger, and the needs are overwhelming,” said Etefa, urging more crossings into Gaza to be opened to allow supplies to get to Palestinians in need.

Authorities in Gaza said last week that Israel had allowed an average of 145 aid trucks into Gaza per day between when the ceasefire came into effect and the end of October – just 24 percent of the 600 trucks that are meant to be entering daily as part of the agreement.

The Norwegian Refugee Council also said on Wednesday that the Israeli authorities had rejected 23 requests from aid agencies to bring shelter supplies, including tents and blankets, into Gaza.

“We have a very short chance to protect families from the winter rains and cold,” Angelita Caredda, the group’s Middle East and North Africa regional director, said in a statement.

“More than three weeks into the ceasefire, Gaza should be receiving a surge of shelter materials, but only a fraction of what is needed has entered. The international community must act now to secure swift and unimpeded access.”

Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians – many of whom remain displaced after their homes were destroyed in Israel’s two-year bombardment – have been forced to seek out food at community kitchens across the Strip.

“Life is difficult for us, because we own nothing and we don’t have anything to buy food with. There is no work,” Abdel Majid al-Zaity, a 55-year-old father of nine from the Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza, told Al Jazeera in the southern city of Khan Younis.

“Without the soup kitchens here, we couldn’t have eaten. These soup kitchens keep us alive and continue living,” he said.

Another displaced Palestinian, 43-year-old Hind Hijazy, also said she struggles to feed her family despite the ceasefire. “Every day I come to the soup kitchen here to be able to provide food for my children,” the mother of six said.

“They say there is a truce, but it is a sham truce because the siege is still in place.”

Real Madrid out of Guehi race – Thursday’s gossip

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Real Madrid leave Liverpool and Bayern Munich to fight it out over Marc Guehi, Tottenham eye Bundesliga defender, and Barcelona hit Rashford snag.

Real Madrid have pulled out of the race for Crystal Palace’s Marc Guehi, 25, who is out of contract in the summer because of high salary and signing-on demands, with Liverpool and Bayern Munich more likely destinations for the England defender. (AS – in Spanish)

Several Premier League clubs are interested in signing Feyenoord’s 19-year-old Dutch right-back Givairo Read but face competition from Bayern Munich. (Teamtalk)

Tottenham and Liverpool are keeping tabs on Wolfsburg’s Greece defender Konstantinos Koulieraki, 21. (TBR Football)

Barcelona manager Hansi Flick has no intention of leaving the club next summer despite reports in Spain that he is “tired” of the club and plans to resign. (Sky Germany – in German)

Leeds face a battle to retain the services of English goalkeeper Alex Baird, 18, beyond January with a host of clubs interested. (Caught Offside)

Barcelona want to sign Manchester United and England forward Marcus Rashford, 28, on a permanent basis, but cannot afford the £25.5 million purchase option in his loan deal. (Fichajes – in Spanish)

Juventus plan to open contract negotiations with Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal target Kenan Yildiz, 20, and expect the Turkey forward to stay in Turin. (Teamtalk)

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    • 17 October
    A graphic of Premier League players from every team in the division in 2025-26 season, with the Premier League trophy in front of them.
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Real Madrid out of Guehi race – Thursday’s gossip

Skip image gallery

Real Madrid leave Liverpool and Bayern Munich to fight it out over Marc Guehi, Tottenham eye Bundesliga defender, and Barcelona hit Rashford snag.

Real Madrid have pulled out of the race for Crystal Palace’s Marc Guehi, 25, who is out of contract in the summer because of high salary and signing-on demands, with Liverpool and Bayern Munich more likely destinations for the England defender. (AS – in Spanish)

Several Premier League clubs are interested in signing Feyenoord’s 19-year-old Dutch right-back Givairo Read but face competition from Bayern Munich. (Teamtalk)

Tottenham and Liverpool are keeping tabs on Wolfsburg’s Greece defender Konstantinos Koulieraki, 21. (TBR Football)

Barcelona manager Hansi Flick has no intention of leaving the club next summer despite reports in Spain that he is “tired” of the club and plans to resign. (Sky Germany – in German)

Leeds face a battle to retain the services of English goalkeeper Alex Baird, 18, beyond January with a host of clubs interested. (Caught Offside)

Barcelona want to sign Manchester United and England forward Marcus Rashford, 28, on a permanent basis, but cannot afford the £25.5 million purchase option in his loan deal. (Fichajes – in Spanish)

Juventus plan to open contract negotiations with Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal target Kenan Yildiz, 20, and expect the Turkey forward to stay in Turin. (Teamtalk)

Related topics

  • Football

More on this story

    • 17 October
    A graphic of Premier League players from every team in the division in 2025-26 season, with the Premier League trophy in front of them.
  • Quiz logo