Arsenal and England star Beth Mead is one of three finalists for the Best Fifa Women's Player for 2022 award, as voted for by national team coaches, their captains, journalists and fans.
The accolade recognises the most outstanding performers in the women’s game from the period from 7 August 2021 to 31 July 2022 and the striker is up against the USA and San Diego Wave’s Alex Morgan, as well as Spain and Barcelona’s Alexia Putellas.
As her legions of fans celebrate the accolade of her being named as a finalist, former coach Andy Cook told football.london how he impacted Mead's youth development at Middlesbrough, especially regarding her finishing. "I worked with Beth for three-four years before she moved to Sunderland and she always stood out," he said.
"When you see her play at 13-14 [years-old] she just had this ability to be able to beat players. She'd beat two, three, four players and then go and score and she'd do that five, six times every game.
"And the challenge was to make her better, how could you make her better? And it came down to the fact that we would have her stay back after training and work on finishing and that was ultimately the biggest thing for her was working on finishing because she had the ability to go past players.
"And obviously at the time we couldn't move her up higher [age group-wise] than what we had. So it was just what's the little change that we can make and ultimately we were trying to get her to finish quickly and on one or two touches where she can hit the corners with different techniques, and different parts of the feet.
"She just always had this raw ability that you didn't need to try and say 'right, you're going to be left winger or forward or right winger', as she's moved on to. It was just a matter of trying to put her in positions where she was going to be challenged and sometimes the challenge was to say ‘right, you've got to try and score five goals today’.
"Because scoring just one or two was fine and she might then sit back and she'd be a little bit casual, so we’d go ‘right we need three more’ and you’d see her step up a gear.
"It’s unfortunate because you know, we played Newcastle or York or Sheffield, and we might have won the game 8-0 but Beth got six. But she was always a fantastic player."
Mead, who is out for the rest of the season with an Anterior Cruciate Ligament injury, scored 11 goals in 22 league games as Arsenal finished second to Chelsea in the WSL last year followed by a tremendous summer.
Not only did she lift the European Championship trophy but she walked away as the 2022 Golden Boot winner with six goals and five assists for England - USA international Morgan was obviously unable to compete and Putellas suffered an ACL blow just before the tournament.
On top of that, the 27-year-old was awarded European Player of the Tournament by UEFA, and a Ballon d'Or Féminin nomination, where she came second to Putellas, only to cap off the year by becoming the first female footballer to win the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.
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