England goalkeeper Mary Earps: ‘People tell me I’m worth millions. Before the World Cup, they’d have said about £10’

It is a little after 9.20pm on a clear August night at Sydney’s Stadium Australia. The stands are fizzing with the energy of more than 75,000 football fans, while back in England, where it is late morning, another 13 million people are watching nervously on TV.

Spain are already 1-0 up against England in the Women’s World Cup final, and have been awarded a penalty in the 69th minute. A VAR check has confirmed a handball by the England midfielder Keira Walsh, and the Lionesses’ confidence is waning. Spain’s Jenni Hermoso steps up to take the spot kick, and it looks as if England are heading for certain defeat. A second goal, at this stage of the game, would kill the dream.

Except there is one cool head on the pitch. Mary Earps, the Lionesses’ keeper, is bouncing on her line, hands on knees, gaze fixed on the ball and Hermoso. The whistle blows and Hermoso strikes; Earps dives instantly to the left and grabs the ball with both hands, throwing her body over it. It is a perfect save. Come the final whistle, in a game that will nonetheless end in loss, Earps will walk off the pitch a hero, named goalkeeper of the tournament, an honour to go alongside being crowned the world’s best by Fifa in February.

Fast forward two months and Earps is in front of me, on the floor of a Manchester photography studio, among two dozen, bright white footballs.

The hair of the woman recently named the world’s best goalkeeper is pulled back in a mid-height pony. She sticks her tongue out and makes rock star signs with her fingers, before settling one of the props in the palm of her gloved right hand. “I need this for my TikTok!” she calls up to her manager, taking videos on the balcony above.

Those hands and gloves – “They’re all men’s,” she says, “mine are modified” – are now among the most famous in football, the men’s game included. Because if last year’s Euros victory turned Earps and her England teammates into national heroes, her performance at this summer’s World Cup, including that penalty save, ensured Earps emerged not just a star but at the top of her sport. In the weeks since her return from the World Cup, brand deals have arrived from the US and Asia, and invitations for fashion week and from executives and sports leaders who want to understand Earps’s winning mentality. There were also two reported record transfer bids by Arsenal, rejected by her club, Manchester United.

Our photoshoot and interview come in the middle of a hectic fortnight that has included an England game against the Netherlands and, for United, two Super League matches and a Champions League qualifier against Paris Saint-Germain. Earps arrives straight from training in Uggs, black leggings and an Adidas hoodie. She is energetic, speaks quickly and pays exacting attention to detail. Even the height of her pony is given careful consideration at the makeup chair – just high enough to feel feminine, just low enough to look chic.

She dances between the focus of a high performance athlete and being a self-proclaimed “goofball” on set; one minute dancing along to Paco Versailles’s Young in California, the next pranking the stylist by letting out an “ouch” to make him think he’s nicked her arm as he cuts her outfit’s label. Her larger than life personality – Earps was the player who climbed on to the press conference table in a Lionesses conga line after England’s Euros victory – means she is as popular with her TikTok followers (a million and counting) as she is unshakeable on the goalline.

Which is not to 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 believe that, two years ago, Earps was contemplating packing it all in. Her United contract wasn’t paying the bills and Phil Neville – Sarina Wiegman’s predecessor as England manager – had dropped her from the team. Not only did she believe she would never wear an England shirt again, she feared the game that had enchanted her since childhood could no longer sustain her, practically or emotionally. But if life, and football, has taught Earps anything, it’s that things can change in an instant.

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Earps was born in March 1993, the eldest of three, growing up in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire. Her parents, Julie and David, ran businesses in hairdressing and the food industry. As a schoolgirl, she sold sweets from her rucksack – early evidence of an enduring fascination with business. “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 enjoy sports – and football was what she did for fun, kicking about in the garden with her brother. When her dad took her to West Bridgford Colts girls, aged 10, she was reluctant to take her turn in goal, cartwheeling between the posts in her first match until she saved a penalty and realised she was good. She could communicate, 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 showed more 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 studying for A-levels when she joined Doncaster Rovers Belles, earning £25 a game while still at school. That summer, she worked six jobs to pay for boots and petrol: toy shop, stationery shop, two coaching jobs, telesales shifts for her dad and in a cinema where she once had to get a colleague to finish her shift when she found out she was starting a match against Birmingham next day.

Earps played for England at age-group level, and had stints at Birmingham City and Bristol Academy before signing her first professional contract, at Reading, in 2016, aged 23. That same year, she graduated with a 2:1 in Information Management and Business Studies from Loughborough University. If she had sway at the top of women’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 number 27 she still wears; 1 belonged to Germany’s first keeper, Merle Frohms, as did the starting spot, leaving Earps often on the bench.

She signed for United the following year and went, as England’s third-choice keeper, to the 2019 World Cup in France. The following February, Neville dropped her – temporarily, she believed; come September, she was cooking and scrolling on her phone when she saw a squad with four goalkeepers, not including her, named for his next camp. She fell to the floor and wept.

“Everything that used to make sense in my life didn’t any more,” she says. What stopped her giving it all up? “I had to make sure I remembered what’s good in life.”

A year later, she was out shopping when the newly appointed Wiegman called to bring her back into camp. With other keepers out injured, Earps started Wiegman’s first seven games in charge. 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 end, Earps played every minute of all six games at 2022’s Euros, keeping clean sheets in four of them. This summer, Wiegman named her vice-captain. She played England’s tournament with acrobatic skill and nerves of steel, shepherding them through a quarter-final penalty shootout against Nigeria and conceding just four goals across the tournament. The crowning achievement was the penalty she saved in the final –but the team not going on to score made it bittersweet.

No matter how she tried, her devastation was clear as she went to collect her runners-up medal, then Golden Glove for the tournament’s best 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 game was a visible reflection of the tremendous strides taken by the women’s game. The tournament, held in Australia and New Zealand, exceeded ticket sales expectations, was streamed to tens of millions around the globe and made household names of its stars. But the huge progress of players such as Earps was overshadowed by the actions of one man, Spanish football federation president Luis Rubiales, who sparked instant global outrage after the final whistle by grabbing Hermoso and planting a kiss on her lips during the awards ceremony. Closer to home, charges of attempted rape, assault and controlling and coercive behaviour against then Manchester United clubmate Mason Greenwood – all denied and subsequently dropped – created another unwelcome distraction.

While Earps won’t be drawn on either incident, there was one controversial topic she did want to address this summer: the lack of replica women’s goalkeeper kits. On 20 July Earps sat down in a room full of reporters, as England prepared to start their World Cup campaign against Haiti. “I can’t really sugar-coat this in any way, so I am not going to try,” she started, after a journalist’s question about fans being unable to buy her shirt. “It is hugely disappointing and very hurtful.” There is a long track record of manufacturers, industry-wide, underserving goalkeeper fans. Complaining through official channels at Nike and the FA had not worked, Earps explained. So what led to her speaking out, I ask. “It had been building for months. I’d wake up every day thinking about it. One day I’d feel like: I’m going to speak today. Then I’d wake up and be like: no, it’s not worth the backlash.

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.”