Former England goalkeeper Mary Earps has said that the lowest point of her international career happened at the start of 2025, when she was coming to the conclusion that she should retire from international football.
In an interview with ITV, the 32-year-old recalled: “I spent a lot of the February camp in Portugal in my room, alone, crying and emotional about different things, one thing or another, and I didn’t want to be that way. I don’t think that’s good for anybody.
“I think you just feel really lost in life. What am I doing? What is the point of all of this in terms of I felt like I was losing my purpose, I was losing a part of myself.”
Earps’s autobiography ‘All In’ comes out this week, and in extracts already serialised in newspapers, she writes about her disagreement with Sarina Wiegman over recalling Hannah Hampton to the Lionesses squad.
Although she admitted that her relationship with Hampton was “difficult”, she added that she had great professional admiration for her abilities.
“I think she’s a very talented goalkeeper and she had a great summer,” she said, going on: “I don’t have bad blood towards Hannah. I wish her all the very best. I told her as such after the tournament. You don’t stay number one forever. Someone is always going to come and take your place. What better way than for the next England goalkeeper to be immensely successful and for England to be immensely successful?”
Mary Earps on Wiegman: She found the situation difficult
And on her relationship with Wiegman, who opted to make Hampton first-choice goalkeeper ahead of the 2025 Women’s Euros, she said: “I think that she found the situation difficult. I think I found the situation difficult. I think that I would have preferred her to have been more direct with me but she did what she felt was best for the team.”
Earps had been a crucial part of the team that won the Euros in 2022, and she reflected that it was her proudest professional achievement.
“I just think it changed everything. What we achieved as a team, it completely changed the landscape of women’s football in this country and also in other countries. I talk to other girls around the world – ‘We want to do what you’ve done, we want our federation to look after us like yours has.'”
And although she has come in for significant criticism this year following her international retirement just prior to the Euros and then the publication of her autobiography, she said: “I hope people will appreciate my vulnerability. It’s hard to put your heart and soul out there. You’re opening yourself up to criticism. What I experienced in the summer, it scars you a little bit.
“If anyone can take anything from my story, even in your darkest days there’s something right around the corner. Just find a way to keep going.”
