How Earps went from £25 a game to ‘Mary, Queen of Stops’

She altered the way she handled goals. She changed the game. But she continues to be the same.

It takes just 11 words for former England team-mate Ellen White to neatly sum up the impact of Mary Earps in a new BBC Sport documentary.

She basically asserts that Mary Earps has something going for her.

And it’s something that’ll be felt long after the shock international retirement – announced this week – and the subsequent negative headlines.

From the peripatetic days of bouncing around a few clubs and juggling six part-time jobs in the amateur women’s football era to endorsements innumerable as a one-person global brand.

From lying in an inconsolable heap on the kitchen floor barely able to speak after being dropped by then England boss Phil Neville in 2020 to finding her voice to take on sportswear giant Nike.

And most importantly, perhaps most importantly, transforming the myths about women’s goalkeeping.

Her presence on the pitch and her prescience off it – a willingness to embrace TikTok is widely credited with her huge popularity – has helped make Earps an unstoppable force.

Of course, this week’s retirement does not come to an end.

Part of the 32-year-old’s stated reason for stepping back from international football is to concentrate on her club career – she’s currently at Paris St-Germain.

However, questions about legacy are inevitable as a result of the global era’s end.

“The legacy I want to leave is leaving the game in a better place”, she says.

That is how it has always been. To try to leave women’s goalkeeping in a better place than it was.

“I believe what has been added to that in recent years is to make goalkeeping cool.

Anyone looking for a source of encouragement from Earps ‘ career has plenty to go at.

The Nottingham-born keeper started out, but it seemed a million miles away to change the game.

In a series of in-depth interviews for documentary Mary Earps: Queen of Stops, Earps and her family open up about that journey to the top of her sport – and some of the big decisions en route.

It was a no-brainer to pursue a goalkeeping career.

“From my very first game I knew I wanted to be a goalkeeper”, she says of an opening match between her side West Bridgford Colts and Hucknall Town. I escaped the punishment that was handed to us, he said. My dad said, in typical dad fashion, ‘ see, if one of the other girls was in goal they wouldn’t have saved that ‘ and for me, that was it”.

Her brother Joel claims, “I always knew she’d be good.” “Something my dad tried to get her to do was to try to develop into a goalkeeper with attributes that weren’t really a part of the women’s game then. a good footed goalkeeper. A goalkeeper that would come out and collect the ball well”.

Earps was making her first professional footballing move in a radically different time frame, despite her father’s high standards.

A 17-year-old Earps made her senior debut for Doncaster Belles in the inaugural season of the Women’s Super League in 2011. Her match fee was then $25.

By the time the WSL turned professional in 2018, Earps already had eight teams on her footballing resume.

When you look at all the teams I’ve played for, my Wikipedia page probably seems a little gloomy, according to Earps, but that was a bit the case back then.

The amateur status at that time meant that players were juggling travel – “three, four or five hours to a WSL club”, remembers Earps – and a day job, around football. More than most people, including Earps, had six part-time jobs, including those at a toy store and a movie theater.

As a result, her career was at a crossroads when she graduated with a degree in information management and business studies from Loughborough University in 2016.

She says, “My concerns were that the women’s game wasn’t viable.” “The infrastructure for women’s football was not going to allow it to go anywhere.

When I graduated, I realized that the plan was always to go to school and that I could either pursue a career that I really wanted or try to make a living. It felt like it was worth taking a bit of a shot and a bit of a gamble on my football career and myself. “

Earps will undoubtedly take some time to reflect on how well that gamble paid off.

Earps ‘ international career was very nearly over before it had started.

Earps discusses the influence England coach Sarina Wiegman has had on her life in a scene from the BBC Sport documentary Lionesses: Champions of Europe.

Earps clicks her fingers to the lens as she describes a Sarina Sliding Doors-style shift, saying:” Sarina came in and life changed, literally like that. “Down of a dime.”

Aged 28, she had been in a two-year international exile prior to Wiegman’s arrival in September 2021. She had played her final game at Wembley against Germany under the guidance of Neville two years prior.

When she found out via Instagram in March 2020 that she’d been dropped by Neville she hit rock bottom”. She “means” that my world was about to end. I opened my phone getting ready to scroll over lunch and yeah, I wasn’t in the squad. I had never received a notification from anyone, neither did I have an email, neither did I have a call, or texted.

“That was the moment where I was in pieces on the kitchen floor”.

One thing is almost unmistakably clear when assembling any tale about the impact or legacy of Earps on women’s football.

Without Wiegman’s appointment, her journey to winning the Euros and twice being voted the world’s best goalkeeper wouldn’t have happened.

Through her vulnerability, Earps’ memories of her and Wiegman’s first conversation reveal one of the other ways she has altered the game.

The strength of their bond and instant connection also offers insight into Wiegman’s reported frustration at Earps ‘ retirement this week.

Earps notes that “the first conversation (with Sarina) was very emotional.” “It was tears and surprise and vulnerability and I don’t think I had ever really shared that vulnerability with a manager before.

I thought that was strange because that occurred just before we spoke.

Former Manchester United and England team-mate Alessia Russo says, “She just needed someone to believe in her.”

On the pitch Earps drew on the pain of her England exile and began the journey towards the record-breaking goalkeeper she would become.

“It occurred at the same time as me figuring out who I was as a person and saying, “No, this is who I am. I don’t want to be somebody else”, she says.

“It’s the same as a goalkeeper,” the statement continues.

” This is what I think I’m good at. communication . I’m an organiser. trying to exert some influence on the game.

“I’m not going to try and do something I’m not good at like stand on the halfway line like Manuel Neuer would do, because that’s not who I am. I’m going to try to mimic Mary Earps’ method.

Off the field, the darker times also helped evolve the Mary Earps way, sparking a revolution in her attitude to mental health, which has had as much of an impact on the women’s game and its fanbase as her prowess in goal.

She claims that being more vulnerable and present has become a significant part of who I am now.

The zenith of that new-found vulnerability came at arguably the pinnacle of her career.

The Manchester United keeper won the world’s best goalkeeper award at Fifa’s in February 2023 after leading England to their first major women’s title at Euro 2022.

Her acceptance speech garnered as many headlines as her form.

“Even when she won Fifa Best Goalkeeper for a second time, she was still the same Mary in training the next day. The Mary who wished things had changed.

Former Manchester United and England team-mate Ella Toone reveals a crucial reason behind Earps ‘ incredible career – the steeliness that exists alongside the vulnerability.

Before Earps became England’s first choice, full-back Lucy Bronze recalls an instructive conversation.

“I remember her saying, ‘ I know I have got what it takes to be No. Bronze says it’s 1′”. “She had that belief”.

In the weeks leading up to the 2023 World Cup, Nike, a sportswear company, made the bold choice to not sell Earps’ replica goalkeeper jersey.

Earps spoke combatively about the decision on the eve of the tournament – putting herself in the centre of a media storm and also adding an additional burden in a high-profile tournament for which both she and the Lionesses were already in the spotlight given they were among the favourites.

More than 150 000 signatures and a sharp U-turn from Nike were the result of her comments.

“You always see young people want to be strikers and score the goals but Mary sets the tone for being a goalkeeper and how important that can be too”, Russo says.

Once more with Earps, much like her retirement this week, it reflects her uncompromising nature.

Earps claims that she felt compelled to speak because Nike’s point of view “tells a whole demographic of people that they’re not important, that the position they play isn’t important.”

She added: “I did feel the pressure but, regardless of how I performed, it was basically a simple moral question of… if you get asked that question and you don’t answer it honestly, and you have a fantastic tournament or you have a bad tournament, when you look at yourself in the mirror, after your career is done, what are you going to think”?

What if I had said it following the competition? It wouldn’t have been as powerful”.

Do you know any powerful, unapologetic pre-tournament statements?

Perhaps Earps ‘ iconic international career was destined to end this way.