When the Arsenal and England centre-back Leah Williamson steps up to speak at the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals summit on Tuesday she will feel a very different level of scrutiny to the pressure she feels when she steps out on to the pitch. “Head up, face forward, don’t drop your Ts,” she says with a grin beforehand.
Williamson is the first England women’s national team player to take the stage at the UN, and it’s an opportunity that may not have come around had the anterior cruciate ligament injury she sustained in April and which ruled her out of the World Cup not afforded her the time to visit the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, the largest Syrian refugee camp in the world.
