Mary Earps’ career has been one of peaks and troughs in rapid succession. From the high of playing against Germany in 2019 in front of almost 80,000 supporters, to the lows of 2020, when she almost quit football. At that point, the money was low, the competition was high and the prospects of leading her country seemed infinitesimally small.
Earps is a big personality, and that could not have developed without those experiences. It’s a lovely warm cliche, using your hardship as fuel and it making you stronger, but it rarely happens like that in reality. Yet Earps can look back on those days and know that they made her.
England have the best goalkeeper in the world – that is beyond doubt. Earps’ shot-stopping is magnificent, but it is her communication and control of situations that are most impressive and stand out in her peer group. England played with different defensive shapes and different personnel in this World Cup (and that was only the final), but it never seems to fluster their goalkeeper. Count how many times she’s in the right place at the right time for the ball to hit her and ask yourself whether luck is even playing a part.
Crucially, Earps is also England’s ultimate big-game player. Her performance in the European Championship final was magnificent, earning her a place in the official Team of the Tournament. But rather than act as recognition, Earps seemed to see it as a challenge. When you fulfil your potential you have two options: keep trying to match that level or try to increase the potential.
And Earps found that potential to be limitless. She has since been named the best goalkeeper in the world by her peers, coaches and supporters. She has been named the best goalkeeper at the World Cup. She has saved a penalty in a World Cup final, joining an exclusive club of men and women.
As she walked across the pitch of Stadium Australia to collect her latest award, Earps will have been torn. She is immensely proud of her personal achievements and everybody loves to receive respect for their hard work. We can allow her that, given what happened under Phil Neville and how we almost lost her to the ‘normal’ world.
Still, there is no fun in walking towards an empty stage, even when you are holding gold. Earps is the connector within this England squad, the self-styled “goofball” who is serious and silly in all the right moments. She desperately wanted to excel in a World Cup final but she desperately wanted more for that excellence to mean something beyond sympathetic commiserations.
But as England and their manager decompress after the heightened pressure of a World Cup campaign, both will rely upon the dependables and the diamonds who will form the next age: another Olympics, another European Championship, another World Cup. In Earps, Wiegman and England have both in one. She is the outstanding achiever of this team and the base of its spine.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/aApeXcH
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