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• BBC
• Fri May 30 2025

"She changed goalkeeping. She changed the game. But she hasn't changed."

It takes just 11 words for former England team-mate Ellen White to neatly sum up the impact of Mary Earps in a new BBC Sport documentary.

Essentially, she is saying, there's something about Mary Earps.

And it's something that'll be felt long after the shock international retirement and the subsequent negative headlines, announced this week.

From the peripatetic days bouncing around a handful of clubs and juggling six part-time jobs in the amateur women's football era to juggling endorsements galore as a one-person global brand.

From lying in an inconsolable heap on the kitchen floor barely able to speak after being dropped by then-England boss Phil Neville in 2020 to finding her voice to take on sportswear giant Nike.

And lastly, perhaps most long-lastingly, helping to flip the perception of women's goalkeeping on its head.

Her presence on the pitch and her prescience off it - a willingness to embrace TikTok is widely credited with her huge popularity - has helped make Earps an unstoppable force.

This week's retirement is not a full stop of course.

Part of the 32-year-old's stated reason for stepping back from international football is to concentrate on her club career - she's currently at Paris St-Germain.

But the end of an international era inevitably leads to questions about legacy.

"The legacy I want to leave is leaving the game in a better place," she says.

"That's what it's always been. To try to leave women's goalkeeping in a better place than it was.

"I think in more recent times what's been added to that is to make goalkeeping cool.

"I just think representation matters ? you can't be what you can't see and hopefully I can represent to people a goalkeeper, but also somebody who's been through a lot and who is still standing, still swinging. Hopefully I can encourage others to do the same."