“Goalkeepers are crazy” - Brian Glanville, English football writer.

A goalkeeper’s game is a lonely one. Only one for each team can be on the pitch at any given time. They need to keep their concentration up for the full 90 minutes of the game, even if the majority of the play is at the other end of the pitch, as they could be called upon at any moment - and any mistake will be roundly scrutinised by the media, hungry for clicks and reactions.

In informal games the ‘keeper is quite often the tallest/least popular of the group, forced to take up position between the sticks and denied the goalscoring glory - it’s rare (but not impossible ) that a save will receive the same adulation as a winning goal. Keepers are often thought of as slightly weird, in the same way as drummers are the odd ones in a band. It can be quite isolating, remaining in your own half while the rest of your team attack the opposing goal, or standing with a roaring crowd behind you coming up with creative chants about you, your kit or your onanistic habits.

A common adage in football is that “strikers win you games, but goalkeepers win you titles”. Despite the lack of glory, a good keeper is the solid bedrock on which successful sides are built. A defence that has confidence in the keeper behind them will play more expressively, calmly, and with more freedom which will spread forward through the team and generally lead to success. While it might not be glamorous, it’s an important position.

It’s coming home

Despite having invented the game of association football (known as “football”, “soccer”, “fußball” or other localisations), the English national team were not very good at it, failing at tournaments unless they got to host them (and even then, success wasn’t guaranteed). After being the only country to submit a hosting bid, England won the rights to host the women’s European Championships in 2021. The two previous occasions that England had hosted a European Championship (or “Euros”) had gone well. Euro 96 was a landmark in changing the view of football from a hooligan’s sport to one enjoyed by the entire country (and, when Gareth Southgate missed a decisive penalty to knock England out at the semi-final stage, enjoyed by all of Scotland, Wales and Ireland as well). Similarly, when the country hosted the women’s Euros in 2005, it was seen as a watershed moment for the women’s game, as audiences in person and on television exceeded expectations.

(I always get more excited for European Championships compared to World Cups. They’re always guaranteed to be shown at a decent time for my time zone, so no awkward questions about breakfast pints; it always feels like at least three games a tournament have previously been wars; and the fans are always passionate *NSFW*)

No more years of hurt

The home tournament was delayed by a year due to Captain Trips, eventually going ahead in the summer of 2022. The England team rode a wave of pride and favourable tournament draws to win the trophy, beating Germany 2-1 in the final, which set an attendance record for any European Championship final (men’s or women’s). That England squad contained three goalkeepers. Two of them, starting keeper Mary Earps and first backup Hannah Hampton, will form the basis of this post. (The third, Ellie Roebuck, would recover from a stroke to sign for the best club team in the world before the age of 25, so has not yet had a dramatic enough life to feature.)

The arrival of Dutch coach Sarina Wiegman, off the back of winning the previous Euros with the Netherlands and taking them to a narrow defeat in the World Cup two years later, galvanised the England team. After the controversy of Mark Samson, and the subsequent depressing drudgery of Phil Neville’s reign, having a manager who didn’t split the squad on racial grounds or play an attacking right-back as a defensive midfielder led to positivity, happiness, and joy throughout the entire squad.

Well, mostly.

Everyone seems to know the score

Around late October 2022, a couple of months after that triumph, hints started to be dropped that all was not right in the England camp. An exclusive by respected Guardian journalist Suzanne Wrack revealed that 21-year-old Hampton had been dropped by England over her behaviour and attitude at England camps, with the article revealing that she “was unlikely to play again under Wiegman”.

At this point Hampton had not played for her club, Aston Villa, for over a month either - her manager at club level, Carla Ward, had told her to stay home for a game against Chelsea (which Hampton defied to watch the game from the stands). Ward said after that match that Hampton was available to play, but something had happened the day before that prompted Ward to decide that “it was in the best interests of the team for her to stay at home”. Hampton, for her part, posted about her trip to the match on Instagram with the caption “let’s go team” and “utv” (Up the Villa).

Wiegman had left Hampton out of two previous camps, citing personal issues for the goalkeeper, so this revelation surprised many. Shortly after Hampton made a post on her instagram (since deleted) stating that she had undergone a minor surgical procedure and would be out for a period of time - no official comment came from her about the article. Three weeks later she had recovered enough to make the bench for Villa, regaining the position as first choice goalkeeper for her club in late January 2023, and being recalled to the England squad in April that year.

I know it was then, but it could be again

The 2023 World Cup was overshadowed by Spain’s football federation’s president Luis Rubiales kissing the winning captain, Jenni Hermoso, without her consent as she collected her gold medal. The losing team in that final was England; after a slow group stage the team gradually improved throughout the tournament only to fall short against Spain. One of the leading figures in the team was Mary Earps, who played every minute and earned the Best Goalkeeper award at the end of the tournament - not her first award, after being voted Best FIFA Women’s Goalkeeper the year before.

The media christened Earps “Mary, Queen of Stops” after several impressive saves, not least from a penalty in the final. She’d already made a name for herself in a press conference on the eve of the tournament, calling out England’s kit supplier Nike for not making replica goalkeeper shirts available for purchase. Post-tournament, and off the back of Earps’ penalty save, Nike did make a run of replicas available, which were all snapped up.

Carnaval de Paris

Despite playing second fiddle at international level, Hampton’s star was on the rise at club level, leaving mid-table Aston Villa to sign for reigning champions Chelsea. Despite being initially third choice behind Zecira Musovic and Germany’s Ann-Katrin Berger, Hampton made the most of the chances that came her way and ended the 2023/24 season as first choice as Chelsea retained their title. Earps’ club, Manchester United, finished in mid-table (quite the drop from their 2nd place finish the year before), so after her contract expired she moved abroad to Paris Saint-Germain.

Normally playing for a better club increases a player’s chances at international level, but Hampton gradually clawed the starting goalkeeper spot for England away from Earps over the 2024/25 season. As late as March Wiegman was unsure who would be her first choice going into the forthcoming Euros in June, but less than six weeks before the tournament Earps announced that she was retiring from international football. Rumours abounded among fans that she was sulking after losing her spot to Hampton, who became England’s de facto number one for the Euros.

Earps’ abrupt retirement left a sudden dearth of experienced goalkeepers in England’s Euros squad. Hampton had played 16 games for her country before the tournament started, which brought the total number of international games played across all three goalkeepers in the squad up to 16 – both the other two players had not yet played for England (one of the pair, Khiara Keating, would receive her first cap a few months later – poor Ellie Roebuck, at this point in time, had only played two games in two years, keeping a clean sheet in neither).

And spring became the summer

Wiegman was disappointed with Earps’ decision, having hoped that she would accept the position as backup and still play an important role in the squad for the Euros. While the fan reaction was largely critical of Earps leaving her (now ex-) teammates in the lurch, Hampton was magnanimous when asked, stating that Earps’ big personality would be missed, and that “[i]t’s been difficult for everyone to come to terms with her decision, but we have to respect that. Now I have got to just go and live up to her legacy. But I’ll give it my best shot.”

England would retain their trophy that summer, with Hampton making crucial saves in penalty shootouts in both the quarterfinal against Sweden and final against Spain, so it’s probably fair to say that her best shot was good enough. A nosebleed for Hampton in the quarters due to an extra-time collision drew comparisons with an England men’s player, Terry Butcher, who has an enduring image of a bloodied shirt following a game against Sweden in 1989. (You’d think, given how regularly Swedish acts like Abba, Zara Larsson and Rednex top the charts in England that they’d like us a bit more, but oh well.) She also hit the headlines after the tournament, confessing to hiding the Spanish goalkeeper’s notes about England’s penalty takers during the shootout at the end of the game. This was something that her opposite number denied – what is undeniably true, though, is that Hampton was voted Best Goalkeeper at the end of the tournament.

You've got to hold and give, but do it at the right time

Three months after the tournament, in October of this year, all was pretty rosy in the England camp. They’d retained their European Championship, and became the first England senior team (of any gender) to win a trophy outside the country, in the process ensuring that there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England. In doing so they’d slain old dragons by beating the side that stopped them winning the World Cup two years prior, and Chloe Kelly added another iconic trophy winning celebration to her arsenal.

Then Mary Earps decided to publish her autobiography.

It’s fair to say that the extracts that the Guardian newspaper chose to use caused a stir. Focusing on her retirement from international football earlier in May 2025, the second paragraph stated that Hampton’s “behaviour behind the scenes at the Euros [in 2022] had frequently risked derailing training sessions and team resources.” The extract goes on to detail Wiegman consulting Earps on Hampton’s potential return to the squad in spring 2023, with Earps against it, wanting to protect the “good energy and morale” of the team, and a conversation a year later between Earps and Wiegman, where Earps stated she felt that letting Hampton start ahead of her was “rewarding bad behaviour”.

The extract then skipped ahead again, to the conversation in April 2025, in which Earps responds to being told (by Wiegman and goalkeeping coach Darren Ward) that Hampton would be England’s number one for the Euros by retiring from international football, because it “didn’t align with her morals and values to continue”. Wiegman requested she stay until after the Euros, which Earps initially agreed to until realising that Wiegman hadn’t watched her in an important playoff game, so stuck to her original decision.

Want more and more, people just want more and more

The extract did the job – it got the Guardian plenty of hits, and the discussion both made people aware of the book and increased sales (I had no idea about it until the piece, and bought a copy for this post, so it worked). The discussion that weekend focused on the vaguely described “bad behaviour” that Hampton exhibited. Earps, coyly, refused to go into specifics as it “wasn’t her place” to do so. When pressed, her only elaboration was “a mismatch, a misalignment, of values.” In her book, the closest description was that it was “overwhelmingly considered disruptive and unreliable, with a risk of being destructive, taking energy and time from coaches who needed to work with the rest of the team”.

It is worth noting, at this point, that since Hampton was dropped by both club and country, she earned her spot as first choice keeper for Wiegman, probably the most successful international manager of the modern era; she was signed by Emma Hayes, probably the most successful club manager (in England, at least) to manage during Hampton’s career, and Hampton became first choice for her as well; and this continued under new manager Sonia Bompastor, an incredibly successful woman both playing and managing. It’s not like Hampton’s career was derailed by this behaviour and she ended up having more clubs than Jack Nicklaus; these women who put their faith in her are at the top of their field.

Hurtin’ runs off my shoulders

Hampton, to her credit, didn’t comment publicly on the situation. In the two games she played between the articles being published and suffering an injury, she let her football do the talking, only conceding once (a late equaliser to England teammate Alessia Russo). Bompastor defended her keeper, calling Hampton “a professional athlete and also a good person”, and adding “If you look at what Hannah said in the previous comments about Mary Earps then what Mary is saying about her now, one of them is class and Hannah is the class one.” She also stood up for Wiegman, referring to her three successive European Championship wins.

Hampton would go on to win the BBC Women’s Footballer of the Year a few weeks later, being only the second goalkeeper to win the award, and became the second ever England goalkeeper to win the Best FIFA Goalkeeper of the Year too. The trailblazer in both was, if you had not already guessed, Mary Earps.

Roughly a month before the extracts were published, Hampton became the inaugural female winner of the Yashin Trophy, presented to the goalkeeper deemed by France Football to be the best in that position for their respective genders, as part of the Ballon D’Or ceremony. In what is a lovely piece of foreshadowing (or - depending on your grasp of printing deadlines - Mary Earps’ villain origin story), Hampton was presented the award by Earps and went on to thank both Wiegman and Ward specifically.

Wiegman’s only comment on the situation was to point out that she “make[s] decisions to win” – a statement fairly well supported by her track record – and England players have refused to be drawn on the subject, giving non-committal answers. Only one former teammate of either keeper spoke up on the matter – Ruesha Littlejohn, who played with Hampton at Aston Villa, called her difficult, disruptive, and not a good teammate on her podcast. (Three weeks later Littlejohn would be sent off for performing a headlock takedown on an opposing player, so I’m not entirely sure what her definition of a “good teammate” might be. Possibly a safer idea to stay in her good books, though.)

Mind and senses, purified

Sensing some coming backlash, Earps posted on Instagram over that weekend to try and repair the damage. There was no apology, but there was an attempt to paint herself as the victim, while apparently complaining that her own words - in a book she had been paid by The Guardian to serialise - were being perceived negatively.

“I know that people like to create drama, but please remember this book is about my life and my experiences. This is not a soap opera, this is real life. Pulling out a paragraph or a sentence here and there is not a reflection of the contents of the book. Please see through the headlines and read it in its entirety.”

On reading the book in its entirety, a throwaway comment caught my eye. In reference to a pair of friendlies in early 2024, Earps playing in one and Hampton the other, Earps mentioned that Wiegman was tweaking the style of play of the team, in a way that suited the younger keeper more than the experienced one. This is not the first time a manager has changed a team’s style to the detriment of the old guard – Joe Hart’s career at Manchester City ended abruptly when Guardiola brought in a method that Hart could not sync with. This is something that’s been largely overlooked in the furore.

Quite often, when an international keeper is usurped by a younger competitor, they’ll stick around to provide experience in the squad and try to regain their place, or give cover in case of injury. Earps decided not to do so, perhaps feeling slighted at losing her place to somebody she clearly does not get on with. Every other goalkeeper mentioned in the book is given a positive description. Would these other players have been described so well if they were the one to replace Earps? We’ll never know. Every other England goalkeeper mentioned in the book that received their first cap after Earps made her debut - Ellie Roebuck, Sandy McIver, Khiara Keating - all frequently received kind words, while Hampton was only given the faintest of praise.