In case you've been living under a rock, Mary Earps has a new book out. Titled "All In: Football, Life and Learning to be Unapologetically Me," the former England goalkeeper has faced criticism all week and has done a slew of interviews for some PR-damage control that has, in some cases, only added fuel to the fire.
Her criticism of Hannah Hampton, who usurped her in goal, and the disintegration of her relationship with England manager Sarina Wiegman have dominated headlines, and polarized opinion, since passages were serialized in The Guardian. Her words have lit a frenzy of commentary, criticism and in some cases, schadenfreude, much to Earps' distress.
But in the book, she also talks with unguarded honesty about her journey from childhood, the bullying she was subject to, battles with body image, the brutality of fighting for a spot in the sport, to finding herself, becoming the best goalkeeper in the world and globally recognized in the process.
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When she retired from England five weeks before Euro 2025, she said she wanted to do it "gracefully." Instead, she felt the effect was akin to how "big business breakups end," with "petrol poured on the flames instead of sand to make it easier for one party to pull away from the other." But amid the backlash, the book offers an unfiltered take of what it's like as an elite athlete coping with losing what you love, and a shifting sense of identity.
Just under a year ago, as you walked from Wembley underground station to the stadium, Earps' name was everywhere. England were playing the United States that evening and children wore England shirts with "Earps No. 1" on the back -- some of the few available. Her face was on scarves, and on one young fan's Christmas jumper. She had been voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year; she was in Madame Tussauds, as she details in her list of accolades which start her book. As the darling of the Euro 2022 squad, and with that viral penalty save from the 2023 World Cup final, she was back-to-back goalkeeper of the year.
But 11 months later, Earps was the past, and Hampton was seen as the present and future. Ahead of England's most recent match with Australia in Derby, there was a merchandise seller's stall outside Pride Park. It had the usual hats, and player-branded scarves. While some scarves of players such as Beth Mead, Ella Toone and Alessia Russo who'd been part of Euro 2022 and Euro 2025 were in high demand, there were other new beloved heroines sitting prominently alongside them: Michelle Agyemang and Hampton. An orange one of "Mearps" was further back on the stall, discounted.
The slide from No. 1 to international retirement in May 2025 threads through nearly a third of the book. The reasons can be summed up succinctly: Wiegman wanted to play out from the back more, which required better distribution from her goalkeeper, and went with Hampton, a decision justified by what happened this summer as England defended their title at Euro 2025. But as Earps felt the No. 1 spot transitioning to her "competitor," you can feel her anguish.
"The rug was slowly being pulled from underneath me and I was fighting between what I felt and what I knew," she writes.
It's a tortured existence, but so much of Earps' book reads of someone who is fighting a constant battle between herself and her job. That tension underlines the whole book, and therefore her career. It's honest and raw: there are passages that make for extremely tough reading, such as where she talks about her mental health, and being bullied at school. She talks about her battles with body image, the constant taunts that she needed to lose weight, and the loneliness she felt at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as she ate biscuits and drank too much alcohol, though she eventually hauled herself out of that spiral. She discusses her long-term relationship with her same-sex partner Kitty and about the process of freezing her eggs. Her openness is admirable and will surely inspire and comfort many readers.
From a sporting perspective, the crux of the book revolves around her seeking recognition: whether it's from her father, or from the club sides, or eventually, from England. She writes about how tough she found it being peripheral, and the image of her slumping to the floor in the kitchen completely desolate after missing out on an England squad where she'd been promised a spot under then-manager Phil Neville is stark.
But then comes the shift, and the rise. Wiegman appointed her England's No. 1, and the national team environment became her "safe space." After being told she was first choice by Wiegman, she writes: "It was the most open and direct conversation I'd ever had with a manager. ... It forged an instant bond between us that I would soon come to trust in and respect immensely." The journey through to Euro 2022 was summed up as: "The return of the Mearps was well and truly on."
There were the viral moments, such as dancing on the table in the news conference after the Euro 2022 final. She identifies the penalty save in the 2023 World Cup final as the moment her stock went stratospheric (the book starts with the scene from Sydney as she saved Spain attacker Jenni Hermoso's penalty, outlining how it was a moment of personal fulfilment but the opening chapter fails to mention England actually lost the match.) That save was Earps at the peak of her powers; "My penalty save in the final had been viewed as heroic and, even, perfect," she writes.
That World Cup coincided with her creating positive change by calling out Nike over the lack of support for female goalkeepers and getting them to sell her jersey (though not referencing at she was an Adidas athlete) and reflecting on her growing fame: "I'd spent forever as a nobody obsessed with saving footballs and that crossed over into widescale recognition. My overnight success had taken 20 years."
She talks through the commercial deals that came her way, a few years after she was taking home leftover food from the Manchester United canteen to eat in the evening to help her balance the books. On holiday after the World Cup final, she writes: "I upped my ambitions too. With a bigger platform, I could work not only to leave women's football in a better place, but women's sport as a whole."
But it's the Hampton-Wiegman-Earps narrative that has generated the headlines, and the serialization deals. The earliest mentions of issues she has with Hampton are in the post-Euro 2022 wash-up where she criticizes Hampton's conduct. Hampton was left out of the next few camps but was recalled ahead of the 2023 World Cup.
After the World Cup and the penalty save, England failed to qualify for the Olympics. It was a line-in-the-sand moment as the World Cup team was finished, and it evolved into one with an eye on Euro 2025 and succession.
"When I arrived in Marbella, in Southern Spain, for England camp in February [2024], I was looking forward to feeling that familiar sanctuary," she writes. "From the first moment, though, I was hit by a creeping, unsettling sense that something had shifted. I couldn't put my finger on it, but the energy was off, different."
Later, after watching Hampton start against Austria and herself return against Italy three days later, Earps recalls a conversation she had with a teammate on the plane home. The teammate told her amid the realization Wiegman was tweaking her system: "'This is pointless, I'm done, I'm retired.' ... Then she said, almost in passing, as though it were obvious, "It'll be you next."" From there to the flashpoint before the Euros where she quit, you are enveloped in her descent and her sense of identity creaking. "Of course there are always new styles of play and innovation but I was stuck thinking, if it ain't broke?"
But in the same breath, it is captivating. For us on the outside, we want to peer behind the curtain of elite sport. The repetition of emotion and unanswered questions offered by Earps over the course of the 15 months from Hampton's emergence as a threat for her jersey in February 2024 to the eventual Wiegman hammer blow lays bare her turmoil.
There's her frank, upsetting description of panic attacks she suffered, at a time where she felt transported back to her childhood self "when I loved football, but it didn't love me back." Through 2025, she details repeated conversations where she sought to find some clarity for her own self.
Earps describes her relationship with Wiegman as "unrecognizable, opaque and instantly cold." Over the next five months up until the Euro 2025 squad announcement, she compares her existence to being a frog in a pan of boiling water: either she was going to swelter to death in an environment she felt stifling, or she could jump out. She says she almost felt relief at the moment of closure when Wiegman told her she was second choice in April 2025.
"Then came the words I'd waited over 12 months to hear: 'I've decided Hannah's the No. 1 for now.' I felt the weight of my heart sink to the floor and the relief that I had finally had clarity lift from my shoulders all at once." She later adds: "I wasn't entitled to keep my place if Sarina didn't want me to, but I was entitled to decide what happens next."
Five weeks out from the Euros, she jumped out of the boiling pot, calling her retirement.
But for all the honesty and emotional baring of the soul in other parts of the book, it was inevitable the headlines were always going to be about the reasons why she retired from England duty five weeks before Euro 2025. There's immediacy bias in sport, so when new favorites clash with previous legends, it polarizes opinion.
Hampton is the new "Queen of Stops." She is the best goalkeeper in the world, and after her performance in the Euros, has thousands of new fans -- the image of Earps passing Hampton the award for best goalkeeper of the year at the Ballon d'Or was your succession snapshot.
As for Wiegman, the coach who transformed Earps' career and gave her a chance, she remains undisputed as the best coach in the sport, someone who has transformed England's fortunes. To paraphrase Omar Little in "The Wire": You come at the Queen, you best not miss.
Tom Hamilton reacts to Mary Earps' "shock" international retirement ahead of the Euros.
Which is why the timing of Earps' criticism has been so jarring. It looks like the sourest of grapes, not aided by the ambiguity over Hampton's "bad behavior" as she puts it. As former England international Fara Williams wrote in her TNT column: "If Mary is going to be open and honest about the situation, she needs to go into more detail about the supposed bad behavior rather than leave it up in the air. I personally don't know if there was bad behavior from Hannah, but even if that was the case, she served her punishment after being left out of the squad."
In the interviews Earps has done since the release of the book, you can see the tears in her eyes, and the stark alarm at the reception. Her old Euro 2022 teammate, Ellen White, said on the BBC she was "uneasy" about what had been written. Earps seems genuinely saddened by the headlines, and it has detracted from what she feels are insights into overcoming adversity.
The hype and focus on the Hampton-Earps dynamic will abate, but this will be the longstanding legacy of a book she so desperately hoped would have a different impact.
"I wanted a retirement, not a public hanging," she wrote post-retirement amid criticism for stepping away. But given her mantra revolves around being "unapologetically yourself," you must accept the feedback, and the differing of opinion in what you have written. As she wrote amid the criticism levelled at her for her untimely retirement: "But I am who I am: Love me or hate me, at least I could be respected for being consistent in character and for being true to myself so that I could see my reflection looking back."
The emotional reaction to this book is testament to its unfiltered nature. But whether Earps feels she was pushed off the sport's grandest stage or jumped herself, the book complicates her legacy.