Before Mary Earps and her Manchester United teammates played at Old Trafford for the first time, the goalkeeper embarked on a vital reconnaissance mission. “I like to know where I’m going to park on match day so I need to drive the route and then work out the way I’m going to walk into the ground after leaving my car,” she explained before that landmark game two years ago.
“I’m the type of person who prepares everything in advance. Maybe other people would use the term ‘control freak’ but it’s just so I don’t waste any mental energy and can focus purely on football.”
That was when Earps believed her England career to be all but over and her thoughts were drifting to a life beyond football. Almost 24 months on, though, things could not be more different for a woman who turns 30 on Tuesday.
Last Monday night Earps was named women’s goalkeeper of the year at the 2022 Fifa Best Awards in Paris. That prize represented richly merited recognition for her key role in England’s Euro 2022 triumph. Earps started all the Lionesses’ six games, keeping four clean sheets and conceding only two goals along the road to England beating Germany in last July’s Wembley final. “Thank you to my loved ones who picked me off the kitchen floor a few years ago,” said Earps after clambering on to the stage. “This is for anyone who has been in a dark place. There is light at the end of the tunnel.”
For a keeper who has played an integral part in Manchester United’s rise to the top of the WSL this season that light manifested itself in September 2021. She was about to set off to shop for curtain poles when England’s then newly installed manager, Sarina Wiegman, telephoned, offering an unexpected call up.
It signalled the end of a period in which her family had, metaphorically, hauled Earps up off the floor after her placement in the international deep freeze by Wiegman’s predecessor, Phil Neville.
After making an England debut under Mark Sampson in 2017, Earps travelled to the 2019 World Cup in France as Neville’s third-choice goalkeeper before being dropped completely. “I was very much of the thinking that: ‘Yeah, this is probably the end of the international road,’” she said. “I never expected anything more. I didn’t feel entitled to anything.
“I never thought I’d be in a squad for a major tournament again, let alone start a final. I can remember the days of feeling really low. I got to a point where I felt I’d reached my limit. I’d given football a good go but I wasn’t quite good enough. I had responsibilities, a mortgage and it wasn’t quite adding up.”
Support from, among others, the United men’s goalkeeper David de Gea helped her avoid a hasty decision. “Eventually I decided to give playing another couple of years,” she said. “Then Sarina came in as England manager and my life changed completely. I felt she really understood me, believed in me and had real empathy for me as a human being. That’s not something I’d experienced a lot in football.”
Wiegman swiftly recognised the quality of a keeper who had learned much from playing against some of Europe’s top strikers during a year spent largely on the bench at Wolfsburg before joining United in 2019. Despite making only six first-team appearances in Germany, just getting to Wolfsburg represented a big achievement for Earps. Only a decade ago the former Doncaster Belles, Birmingham, Bristol City and Reading keeper juggled a series of low-paid, part-time jobs to fund the petrol money required to drive to training from her then home in Nottingham.
Life on the minimum wage persuaded Earps to maximise a longstanding fascination with commerce by completing an information management and business studies degree at Loughborough University. By the time the pandemic struck she was already impressing at Manchester United women’s Leigh Sports Village base but used the spare time created by the lockdowns to take an online course in entrepreneurship.
“I eat, sleep, dream and breathe football but I’m also fascinated by business,” she said.
These days, Earps’s homework is not restricted to picking up her car keys and researching match-day parking options. “I watch as much televised football as I can,” she said. “I watch a lot of Premier League games but I also study goalkeepers from all over the world.”
As Manchester United’s manager, Marc Skinner, confirms, burning the midnight oil has not been in vain for the first WSL goalkeeper to keep 50 clean sheets. “Monday’s award was a wonderful achievement and thoroughly deserved,” he said after joining Earps’s fellow United players in presenting her with congratulatory flowers. “The speech Mary gave in Paris was truly beautiful – and so inspiring.”
As she takes her place in goal as United host Leicester on Sunday Earps will be very much on a mission. “I want to make goalkeeping cool,” she said. “It’s both fun and important.”
