Hege Riise had evidently made up her mind. “The player report hasn’t been great,” England’s then interim manager said as she explained why Beth Mead had been omitted from the squad for a friendly against Northern Ireland.
It was February 2021 and the Norwegian coach who bridged the gap between Phil Neville’s departure and Sarina Wiegman’s arrival was preparing for the additional task of taking the GB women’s football team to the Olympic Games in Japan.
Mead not only failed to make the cut but was left angry and disillusioned at her treatment during England training camps when Riise deployed the Arsenal forward in both full-back positions. “I was making up the numbers,” she said.
Mead’s hat-trick in England’s 8-0 Euro 2022 group stage demolition of Norway on Monday in Brighton took the 27-year-old’s tally under Wiegman to 18 in 16 games.
Given Mead plays mainly on the right wing for her country and Arsenal that is an extraordinary statistic but the Teesside University Sports Development graduate was a No 9 during her formative years in Middlesbrough’s academy and Sunderland’s first XI.
In 2015-16, she was the WSL’s top scorer while at Sunderland and reluctantly moved wide on joining Arsenal in 2017 because of the presence of Vivianne Miedema, one of the world’s leading strikers.
Perhaps this shift right – from where Mead creates a lot of goals – has been the making of her as a footballer. After all, in 2016 England’s manager at the time, Mark Sampson, was unimpressed. “Beth needs to improve her all-round game, work ethic, athleticism and learn to bring other players into things,” he said, rather damningly, suggesting there was negligible chance of Mead displacing Jodie Taylor in his attack.
Six years on, Mead is an expert at not merely conjuring goals courtesy of some consistently stellar crosses and link play but tracking back and counter-pressing with surprising ferocity.
Coaches – Neville included, who regarded her as “too nice” and “overly laid-back” – did not necessarily detect it but there has always been an aggressive edge to her game. It first emerged during Mead’s childhood in Hinderwell, a village near Whitby situated inside the North York Moors National Park, where she learned to play alongside boys on the village green before joining California Girls, 45 minutes’ drive away on Teesside.
She was soon snapped up by Middlesbrough’s academy and, alongside more streetwise teammates, began requiring that inner edge. “I was a country girl suddenly training with town girls from Middlesbrough so I was out of my depth,” she has said. “I used to cry at least once a week about going there.”
By the age of 16 she had toughened up sufficiently to catch the eye of Mick Mulhern at Sunderland. The coach responsible for developing several of Mead’s future international colleagues including Lucy Bronze, Jill Scott, Demi Stokes, Steph Houghton, Jordan Nobbs and Carly Telford swiftly lured Mead to Wearside.
After initially juggling football with pulling pints in her local pub in Hinderwell, she turned professional with the sole proviso that she could complete her degree. Today, she is such a strong advocate of female footballers combining the game with academic studies that she is helping fund Beth Mead scholarships” providing bursaries to enable four promising players to enrol for undergraduate or postgraduate courses at Teesside University.
Mead still relishes returning to her roots, even if she shudders at the memory of a Thursday night in 2015 when, driving back from training at Sunderland, a deer ran out in front of her on the moors. Striving to avoid hitting it, she ended up striking a road sign and rolling her car three times.
Mercifully, she emerged unscathed and three years later made her England debut. By the 2019 World Cup in France she was a key part of Neville’s squad but started only two games as the Lionesses reached the last four.
“Under Phil it was very much about hard work but now everyone just feels free,” she said recently. “Sarina’s told us to slow down and enjoy our football a little more and that’s helped massively. Sarina’s given me a lot of confidence and freedom; I understand what’s expected of me a lot more than in the past.”
Riise’s rejection also arguably played a part in the maturation of Arsenal’s 2021-22 player of the season. “I wasn’t in a good place last summer,” Mead said recently. “I hated myself for feeling like I did but I was hurt, angry and confused and I was actually having negative thoughts about other players, wanting them to do badly.”
She channelled her disappointment by “playing angry” for Arsenal and England with spectacular results.
Neville, now Inter Miami’s head coach, must be suitably delighted at the metamorphosis of a forward he once felt could be a little complacent. “Beth’s the nicest kid but she’s the one player I’ve given a massive rocket to,” he said shortly before stepping down as England manager.
“I said: ‘Stop being so nice.’ We had some harsh words. But I think she now wants to reach the moon rather than being happy to go to Whitley Bay for fish and chips.”
