Former England captain Steph Houghton has revealed she felt “disappointed and let down” by her treatment at the hands of Lionesses boss Sarina Wiegman.
Houghton was a stalwart for the England team throughout the 2010s, ultimately winning 121 caps for her country during a 14-year international career and captaining them for a large part of that time.
However, she wasn’t selected for the 2022 European Championship on home soil despite battling back from a torn Achilles as she was one of the final players cut before the squad of 30 was announced and watched on as the Lionesses claimed England’s first major trophy.
Then, in 2023, Houghton says she was told by Wiegman that if she kept working, she would be able to make the squad for that summer’s World Cup but was ultimately left out – and now claims she was abandoned and shown no empathy despite 14 years of service.
“I was disappointed with the whole situation from the start to finish,” Houghton said in an interview with The Guardian. “When the goalposts keep changing, it’s hard as a player to really believe in anything and trust that situation. It seemed like no matter what [Wiegman] said I had to do, and after I did that, it was never going to happen.
“If I was to ever go into management or coaching, I would always have a people-first approach. It’s important to be honest, but also to respect what a player has achieved. I would never like anybody to feel the way that I felt in that two-year period.
“I like to think if that was me in a scenario where I’d let go of a player who had done a lot over the past years with the nation, I’d have those difficult conversations with her. It’s starting to go down that men’s football route in the sense that you are a number, and that human touch wasn’t there. So I felt let down as they could have done things a little bit different.”
England would go on to reach the World Cup final, before agonisingly losing to Spain, but Houghton’s international career was over and she opted to retire from playing completely at the end of the 2023-24 season.
Houghton’s husband is former Bradford City footballer Stephen Darby, whom she married in June 2018 just three months before he was diagnosed with the degenerative disorder motor neurone disease (MND).
Darby has deteriorated in recent months and has had to undergo surgery to implant a feeding tube.
“You want Stephen to be living a normal life as much as possible, to be able to eat as much food as he can and get that calorie intake on board,” Houghton explained.
“Over the last few months, it became a bit risky having food and that’s when the decision had to be made. We need Stephen to keep weight on and to eat. It hasn’t been a great few months because these decisions are life-changing and it takes a lot of time to get used to. But ultimately it’s the best thing for him. It allows him to relax a bit more.
“There are good and bad days but I think we’ve adapted really well over the last six years. It’s obviously a tough ride but I want to be honest about the actual process and spread awareness of the disease. It’s so important we discuss the reality of MND so we can potentially help people in the future.”
