For a split second on Friday night, given the ferocity of the cheer coming from one corner of the stand behind the substitutes, you could have been forgiven for wondering if England had surreptitiously scored another goal in the Euro 2025 qualifier against the Republic of Ireland. Not quite. The din was merely in response to Mary Earps jogging down the touchline to warm up. The England fans’ love for the BBC sports personality of the year is stratospheric.
And much later on Friday, a quiet, touching moment offered a prime example of why Earps has such popularity. Long after full time, the new Paris Saint-Germain goalkeeper was up in the stands, spending time making somebody’s week. She was speaking to a girl who was accompanied by a first-aider and who had been experiencing anxiety and panic attacks. Earps had helped calm her down and put the biggest of smiles on her face with a simple act of kindness.
This was us you saw Tom. My 14yo has started suffering with functional seizures. Avid ⚽️fan she was determined to not miss out. Earps was incredible-so understanding and inspirational for our girls. Amazing that mental health is openly talked about.💪🏼 @Lionesses @NorwichCityFC pic.twitter.com/0H4X8OjeB0
— Kirsty smith (@Kirstys74150237) July 13, 2024
And on the pitch, she’s far more than just the woman who took on Nike. European champion? Tick. World Cup golden glove? Tick. Fifa best goalkeeper of the year? Tick, twice. However, outright England No 1? Seemingly not any more.
It was Chelsea’s Hannah Hampton who was given the nod to start the game ahead of Earps. That in itself was not particularly unusual – Earps and Hampton have been rotated for games of lesser importance in recent months – but this time felt different. This time both players were available for a must-win, competitive qualifier, and the 23-year-old Hampton was selected ahead of the 31-year-old Earps.
Before the match, with Earps passed fit after recovering from the hip injury that had caused her to miss June’s win in France – a victory in which Hampton pulled off a crucial late save to clinch the three points – the England head coach, Sarina Wiegman, had admitted that selecting her goalkeeper was the “hardest” decision she had to make for the visit of the Ireland .
Wiegman explained her selection after Friday’s 2-1 win, saying in her press conference: “They are competing for that spot. Of course, that competition started a while ago – in February they both played a game, in April that was the same case. Mary got the injury, unfortunately, and Hannah came in and did well [in France in June]. Mary did her rehab, she did everything to be available for now, and she is available, she is in a good place, but I made the decision to keep Hannah on the pitch.”
It’s a shift in tone compared with last year’s World Cup, and certainly compared with the autumn of 2022, when the Guardian revealed that Hampton had been dropped from the squad by Wiegman because of her behaviour at the team’s camps. In the intervening months, those who see Hampton day-to-day in training have been praising how much she has matured, particularly since her move to Chelsea in 2023.
Nevertheless, Earps has still felt like a constant in the heartbeat of the team, an intrinsic part of the success and an icon for a generation of younger fans.
So much so that, perhaps for many of this England team’s newer supporters, or the 1.2 million people who follow Earps on TikTok, the alien idea of a Lionesses team without Earps might be hard to imagine. Like a Eurovision song contest without Graham Norton, a Line of Duty series without Ted Hastings, or even a US women’s national team roster without Alex Morgan, but – as Morgan found out this summer, omitted from a major tournament squad for the first time since 2008 – times change, eras end, teams evolve. For England, nobody’s place is safe, as younger players improve.
WSL seasons, being relatively short, only offer a small sample size, but some of last season’s key statistics read in Hampton’s favour: she kept a clean sheet in 60% of her WSL appearances last term compared with Earps’ 32%. Hampton saved 74% of the shots on target that she faced, to Earps’ 67%. On the other hand, the vastly more experienced Earps played far more minutes – an ever-present in the league for Manchester United, unlike Hampton for Chelsea – and faced significantly more shots. Hampton was denied a clean sheet at Carrow Road by Ireland’s late consolation goal. Wiegman’s choice of goalkeeper for Tuesday’s decisive qualifier in Sweden will be very telling indeed.
