To outsiders, it would appear as though Mead’s life couldn’t get any better. Not only had she won Euro 2022 with England, she was awarded the Golden Boot and chosen as the tournament’s best player – all achievements that earned her a place on the Ballon d’Or shortlist.
Yet, as is often the case with professional sportspeople, nobody knew what was going on with Mead – what was driving her on her to play like she had never played before – beneath the surface, away from the football field.
“My mum has terminal cancer,” Mead tells i. “In perspective of that, it made me look at life a lot differently. My mum’s now having a lot of her life taken away from her from this disease.
“I don’t think you can waste time anymore worrying about things that are not worth worrying about. People may say to me that’s quite a simple way of looking at things, but for me it works.”
A fire was lit under Mead after she was omitted from the Team GB squad to play in the Tokyo Olympics last year and following her mum’s cancer diagnosis in August 2021, when the family were unsure if she would even be alive by the time Mead played in a home European Championship, Mead made the conscious decision to “strip it all back” and just go out and play, with freedom and youthful abandon.
Her ferocious performances for Arsenal, when they came within a point of winning the Women’s Super League title last season, earned her the England call for Euro 2022 and what she did at the tournament – the clean sweep of individual and team awards – is a feat rarely achieved.
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“My motivation was my mum. My mum was incredible for me: she was more of a rock than me, my dad and my brother, and she’s the one going through it. I wanted to make her proud. I wanted to make her happy.
“It’s trying to make the best out of a bad situation. Life is never straightforward. Someone’s always got something going on that you don’t know about behind closed doors. I know I’m not the only person in the world with this going on. You can deal with the situation how you want, and for me that’s how I approached it.”
Considering everything, Mead desperately needed a break as soon as the European Championship celebrations were over. She had only 10 days until she was back preparing for the new season with her club and flew to Greece with her partner, and Arsenal teammate, Vivianne Miedema.
“It was a little bit of wanting to get away from everything,” she says. “You’ve worked so hard, then we partied for 48 hours. We’d prepped for nine weeks: we hadn’t been out, we hadn’t eaten shit, we hadn’t drank. The 48 hours took it out of you. There was so much going on. It was nice to get away. I’m going to switch off then I’ll come back to the madness when I get back home.”
Not that they could completely avoid the madness abroad. Mead and Miedema booked a suite with a private pool, but when they ventured out for food they could not avoid the approaches and selfies.
“In the middle of your meal, sometimes,” Mead says. “I was like, I could do with eating my meal first!”
It has its perks. They were bought the odd free drink and one family even paid for their dinner.
“That was really nice, I never had that expectation from anyone. They paid for our meal as a congratulations, which was lovely,” Mead adds. “To walk down the street was a little bit different. Wanting pictures, which I’m very extrovert and outgoing, so I really like that part of it. My partner – not so much.”
Miedema is a highly decorated Dutch forward who holds scores of records and is long accustomed to the attention, especially in Netherlands. But “Viv’s not so into it”, Mead says. “She gets overwhelmed. I didn’t mind it but she’s like, ‘Ah, God, how many more are you going to get?’ I’m like, ‘I’m sorry! I’m too nice. I’m not very good at saying no’.”
Mead’s football has shown no signs of letting up in the new season. In the Women’s Super League, it’s two wins from two, eight goals – three scored by Mead – and none conceded. They have one win and a draw in the Champions League. And Arsenal have already broken the WSL attendance record, when they played the north London derby against Tottenham last weekend at the Emirates.
Mead, 27, has worn a WHOOP fitness tracking wrist band for a couple of years now and her stats from the game are astounding. An average heart rate of 159bpm – imagine running continuously at a pace that strains your lungs – a max of 190bpm, it was at 180pm when she scored the opening goal.
When she was substituted in the 74h minute the referee ordered her to leave the field at the closest touchline, to avoid running down the clock, meaning she had to walk closely past the stands.
“I had a standing ovation, every single person I walked past clapped. I was really taken aback by that,” Mead recalls.
“I’ve done that at the Euros but it had a different feel. I felt goosebumps, it was an emotional moment. It was such a nice feeling and I’d never felt like that before.”
Mead believes these types of games, hosted in big stadiums, need to “become the norm” for women’s football to continue expanding and thriving.
There was a surge in Arsenal ticket sales after Mead and her teammates lifted the Euro 2022 trophy at Wembley and 47,367 turned up to watch the north London derby. By contrast, the capacity of their usual home stadium, Meadow Park, which they share with National League side Boreham Wood, is 4,500.
“We play here,” Mead says, gesturing around as we sit in a pleasant bar area of the modest stadium for the interview.
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“It’s a lovely ground, but it holds a few thousand people, so you’re capping straight away the amount who can come and see you play.”
That said, after the Tottenham game Mead spent an hour greeting as many fans as possible, posing for selfies, signing autographs or just chatting with them. A new normal of the post-Euro 2022 world.
“It’s getting the right balance, doing the right things and not letting it affect your football too much,” she says. “That’s where I’m trying to get it right at the moment.
“Since Covid you appreciate fans a lot more. There was no atmosphere without them. A football match is not the same without fans, so for me to spend an hour after a game can go so far with kids, even grown adults. But I can’t be going round people for an hour after every game.”
But how life has changed. Mead can still remember when she joined Sunderland as a 16-year-old, when they would train two evenings a week on the 3G pitches they shared with Gateshead College. And there was no obvious pathway to becoming a professional.
By the time she was 18, however, Mead and “four or five” others signed full-time contracts. They would train in the morning, go home then return at 7.30pm for evening sessions with the semi-pros who had just finished a day’s work.
At Arsenal now, she is fed, trained and has access to top facilities and staff. “It’s come a long, long way! We have an expectation now and we want to bring the women’s game higher and higher.
“For so long we’ve accepted things, and gone, ‘Ah this is nice’, where now we’re pushing. Not to be divas. We want the best for the game, we want more and more.
“Arsenal have been incredible, they’ve built us a new facility and we’re hopefully going into it soon. Now we’ve got to deliver on the football pitch. We have no excuses: we didn’t have access to the gym at this time, or we couldn’t go to the pool at this time.
“It’s come a long, long way and now we’re demanding — and we have the right to, just because we want the game to become better and better for the next generation.”
As part of that process, Mead has told i the Lionesses have no intention of giving up on forcing the Government to ensure all girls have access to playing football in schools.
After they were crowned Euro 2022 champions, each of the Lionesses penned an open letter to Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak during the Conservative party leadership contest demanding they made football a compulsory part of girl’s PE for at least two hours per week.
It came the day after i revealed that the Department for Education had refused to commit to ensuring girls had equal access to football at school.
At the time, a spokesperson for Truss said she was committed to “investigating” why girls do not have access to football in schools. But almost two months later, no progress has been made public.
Since becoming prime minister, Truss has had to contend with the Queen’s funeral and a new mini-budget that has wreaked chaos on the country’s finances, but this newspaper has been told that work is going on behind-the-scenes. “They’ve got a tough job ahead to keep us away,” Mead says.
A representative of the Lionesses is acting as a go-between, liaising with government officials and the players. “We had a little bit of an update that they were looking into things and hopefully trying to move it forward,” Mead said. “We haven’t had a definitive answer yet on things.
“We’re still waiting. With the Queen’s funeral it’s been pushed back. Fingers crossed, I think it’s something that has to be pushed over the line. We are really invested in this.”
Mead added: “It’s something we felt we were in a great position to demand, especially with the effect we had in the Euros in general.”
According to statistics compiled by the Football Association, just 44 per cent of secondary schools provide equal football lessons in PE for both genders
So three days after beating Germany in the final at Wembley, the Lionesses all signed the letter and shared it on their social media pages stating: “Throughout the Euros, we as a team spoke about our legacy and goal to inspire a nation. Many will think that this has already been achieved, but we see this as only the beginning.
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“We want every young girl in the nation to be able to play football at school. The reality is we are inspiring young girls to play football, only for many to end up going to school and not being able to play.
“This is something that we all experienced growing up. We were often stopped from playing. So we made our own teams, we travelled across the country and despite the odds, we just kept playing football.
“We ask you and your government to ensure that all girls have access to a minimum of two hours a week PE. Not only should we be offering football to all girls, we also need to invest in and support female PE teachers too. Their role is crucial and we need to give them the resources to provide girls’ football sessions.
“They are key role models from which so many young girls can flourish.”
Mead, 27, also believes the government review into women’s football, announced in the wake of the Euro 2022 victory and to be led by former England player Karen Carney, can help the game grow.
“Karen knows what it’s like in the football environment, she’s been there, she’s done it at the highest level, but she also sees it on the other side, the media aspect of things as well,” Mead, who played with Carney for England, said. “She knows where the women’s game started and where it is now, and the expectation of where it wants to be.
“I know Kaz is very honest, she’ll be harsh when she needs to be. I think it’ll be a good outcome.”
Beth Mead uses WHOOP to improve her performance, health and wellbeing. Find out more at WHOOP.com
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