Beth Mead has vowed to “work her a*** off” to be part of England's bid for World Cup glory next summer.
The newly-crowned 2022 Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) is struggling to be fit for the start of the tournament on July 20 in Australia and New Zealand after rupturing her anterior cruciate ligament last month. But the Arsenal striker, who won the Golden Boot and Golden Ball during the Lionesses’ Euro 2022 triump h this summer, has promised to do everything to be on that England flight down under.
“It’s an interesting injury really, people come back from it in different time frames,” she said after becoming the first women’s footballer to receive the prestigious SPOTY award. “I’m two weeks post-op now and I’m in a really good position.
“It’s a difficult one to put a time stamp on because you can wake up one morning and it’s stiff and you can’t do anything, and another morning you feel you could run on the pitch.
“I’m going to take it each day as it comes, that’s what mum has always told me, and I will work my hardest. I will work my a*** off in that gym to get myself in the best possible position for next year.
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“It’s a cliche, but these injuries are part of the game, they suck and the three letters ACL are not the ones you ever want to hear. But there’s no point me sitting here and sulking about it. All I can do is control my comeback as best I can.”
Mead’s partner and Arsenal team-mate Vivianne Miedema suffered the same injury three weeks later and has already ruled herself out of Netherlands’ World Cup squad. Mead and Miedema are not alone and three other players who finished in the top 20 for this year’s Ballon d’Or have also been struck down by ACL injuries.
In total, 10 senior Women’s Super League players are out with ACL problems and Mead, who finished runner-up in the Ballon d’Or, wants to lead more research into the issue. The Football Association has already studied data from the past four years and Mead, 27, said: “I see myself as quite a robust player, but this has still happened.
“You look at Viv, she’s quite a robust player too and we’ve not been players generally hit with injuries, so I do think we need to look into it a lot more. I think if that happened with a [Lionel] Messi, a [Cristiano] Ronaldo, a [Antoince] Griezmann, there would probably be a lot more done.
“Unfortunately, this has happened to us, but hopefully it can kick somebody up the a*** to start doing something. The scheduling could be a lot better. We won the Euros and a couple of weeks later we’re back in camp again, not really having had any time to switch off.
“We do it because it’s our job and we love what we do, but at the same time players need to be looked after better. Me and Viv would really like to get involved. Hopefully, we can look into some stuff and it would be a positive use of our time.”
