England squad for Women’s Euro 2022: player profiles - Hemp, Bronze, White…
Led by the likes of Ellen White, Lauren Hemp and Lucy Bronze, hosts England have a squad that goes into Euro 2022 with high expectations.
As part of The Guardian’s Women’s Euro 2022 Expert’s Network, a collaboration between media outlets from 16 countries, AS is offering in-depth profiles of the players in all 16 squads at the tournament, which reaches its finale on Sunday 31 July as England take on Germany in the final. This lowdown on the hosts is written by the Guardian’s Louise Taylor.
How to the watch the Euro 2022 final: England vs Germany
Name: Ellie Roebuck
Date of birth: 23 September 1999 (22)
Position: Goalkeeper
Club: Manchester City
Roebuck’s schooldays in Sheffield were enriched when her parents began fostering a series of children she delighted in introducing to the art of goalkeeping and says “opened my eyes to less privileged lives”. A dedicated Sheffield United fan, she relaxes by walking her dog and maintaining a reputation for wearing the most cutting edge High Street fashion available. “I’m obsessed with Zara, but who isn’t?” says Roebuck, who is striving to regain her position as England’s first choice goalkeeper after missing the first half of this/last season with a calf injury. A very decent outfield player, Roebuck impresses with ball at her feet and has benefited from training alongside the City men’s goalkeeper Ederson, at the club’s Etihad Campus.
Mary Earps
Date of birth: 7th March 1993 (29)
Position: Goalkeeper
Club: Manchester United
A graduate in Information Management and Business Studies from Loughborough University, currently competing with Ellie Roebuck to be England’s no1, the Nottingham born Earps spent part of lockdown taking a refresher course in entrepreneurship and reading books on international economics. She learnt German during the 2018-19 season she spent with Wolfsburg and says the experience of living abroad “taught me to be myself, I learnt to disagree and say no”. Despite her academic leanings and dedication to training, team-mates know to be wary of Earps’s penchant for innovative practical jokes. Peaky Blinders and Friends rank as her favourite television viewing.
Hannah Hampton
Date of birth: 16 November 2000 (21)
Position: Goalkeeper
Club: Aston Villa
Hampton was born with a squint and was so severely cross eyed that, by the age of three, she had undergone three operations at Birmingham children’s hospital where she is now an ambassador. At five her teacher parents emigrated from Warwickshire to Spain where she was swiftly scouted by the Villarreal academy - as a striker. Hampton remains fluent in Spanish and French and makes frequent visits to her former country but, after returning to England reinvented herself as a goalkeeper in Stoke’s academy. During her time with Stoke she was diagnosed with Strabismus, an eye condition which effects depth perception and was told she would never play football at the highest level. Thanks to an amalgam of her incredible determination and ophthalmic skill she has confounded the doubters and, courtesy of a fiendishly complex, contact lens prescription is as clear sighted as any Lioness.
Lucy Bronze
Date of birth: 28 October 1991 (30)
Position: Right back
Club: Barcelona
Bronze spent part of her childhood growing up on remote, windswept Holy Island - or Lindisfarne - off the north Northumberland coast. Born just across the Scottish border in Berwick-upon-Tweed, to an English mother and Portuguese father she had the choice of representing three countries internationally. Now widely regarded as the world’s best right back, Bronze played for Alnwick Town boys team in Northumberland until the age of 11 and, as a University Student in North Carolina, later turned out for North Carolina Tar Heels under the world renowned coach Anson Dorrance. Bronze says the Tar Heels taught her “that it was ok for a girl to be competitive and want to win.” Now in her second spell at City after a hugely successful interlude at Lyon, she spent the first half of this/last season recovering from the fifth knee operation of her career. Is set for a new challenge after announcing that she is leaving City this summer.
Rachel Daly
Date of birth: 6 December 1991 (age 30)
Position: Right back/midfielder/forward
Club: Houston Dash
When Phil Neville managed England he once, rather memorably, remarked “Rachel reminds me of me.” That was a reference to Daly’s accomplished interpretation of assorted outfield positions, most notably right back, right midfield and centre forward. She has appeared most frequently at right back for the Lionesses but such versatility makes her an invaluable squad member. North Yorkshire born Daly cut her footballing teeth as the only girl playing for Killinghall Nomads, a junior team based in a village just outside Harrogate. A Leeds United fan she crossed the Atlantic after winning a sports scholarship to study at St John’s University in New York City and has since built a life in Texas where she has recently started playing golf in her spare time.
Millie Bright
Date of birth: 21 August 1993 (28)
Position: Centre back
Club: Chelsea
Bright was placed on the back of the horse for the first time at the age of two and spent much of her childhood dreaming of making it to the top as a show jumper. Although a place in the Killamarsh Dynamos team in her native Derbyshire began converting her to football, as a teenager she combined working as a groom to a professional dressage rider with playing semi professionally. Despite her family possessing a yard full of horses in Sheffield, Bright’s contracts with Chelsea and England, bar her from participating in the equestrian pursuits she is determined to return to post retirement. Given her growing importance to both club and country that looks some way off. A centre half with a penchant for scoring some spectacular volleys, Bright’s combative approach was inspired by her grandfather, Arthur, a former miner. “My Grandad told me ‘Millie, if it’s a 50/50 ball make sure you come out of the challenge with it,” she says. “You could say I’m a front foot defender.” Sarina Wiegman has made her England’s vice captain.
Alex Greenwood
Date of birth: 7 September 1993 (28)
Position: Centre back/left back
Club: Manchester City
Profile: Liverpool born Greenwood is the long term partner of the Sheffield United central defender Jack O’Connell and happily acknowledges that much of their home lives revolve around watching, analysing and talking football. A former left back she has morphed into a left sided centre half whose elegant assurance on the ball - something further honed during a recent season spent winning a quartet of trophies at Lyon - is proving pivotal to England’s stylistic transition under Sarina Wiegman. Away from football she enjoys cooking, spending time in the holiday home she and O’Connell share in Dubai and clothes shopping with her good friend and City and England team-mate Ellie Roebuck.
Lotte Wubben-Moy
Date of birth: 11 January 1999 (23)
Position: Central defender
Club: Arsenal
An elegant ball playing central defender, Wubben-Moy comes from an artistic family. Her Dutch father is a furniture designer, her English mother a fashion designer and her sister a graphic designer. After attending the Anglo-European academy in Essex, a player whose football education had begun in the concrete cages of Bow, East London headed to the United States on a sports scholarship and turned out for North Carolina Tar Heels. Wubben-Moy blossomed under the influence of the Tar Heels much vaunted coach, Anson Dorrance, returning to Arsenal (where she had progressed through the junior system) ready for the first team. Her favourite song is Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams.
Demi Stokes
Date of birth: 12 December 1991 (30)
Position: Left back
Club: Manchester City
One of a nucleus of experienced England players who all began their careers with Sunderland, Stokes was born in Dudley but moved to South Shields as a baby. She subsequently captained a boys team, honed her close control on the north east’s sandy beaches and eventually left Sunderland to take up a sports scholarship at the University of South Florida. A stint in Canada, playing for Vancouver Whitecaps followed. Unusually among England players Stokes has not got round to learning drive and often provokes frequent surprise when she boards buses in Manchester. A firm favourite with City fans she never tires of studying videos of the Barcelona and Brazil full back, Dani Alves in action.
Jess Carter
Date of birth: 27 October 1997 ( 24)
Position: Left back
Club: Chelsea
A versatile defender, Carter can operate at left back, right back, wing back, centre back, and in midfield. Born in Warwick she was a sporting all rounder as a child, playing County level netball and rounders as well as appearing at fly half for Worcester Warriors. “I was better at rugby than football,’ she says. “But then at 16 I had to choose between the two.” Football won and Charles joined Birmingham where, at 16, she made her debut in a Champions League quarter final against Arsenal, winning the player of the match award. Birmingham was also where she met her partner, and current Chelsea teammate, the goalkeeper, Ann-Katrin Berger. Carter loves to travel and is planning trips to Hawaii and the Philippines.
Leah Williamson
Date of birth: 29 March 1997 (25)
Position: Centre back/midfielder
Club: Arsenal
When Steph Houghton’s injury problems dictated England would need a new captain, there was an obvious candidate. While Jonas Eidevall, Arsenal’s manager, has said he routinely constructs his team around Williamson’s ball playing assurance, athleticism and positional versatility, Sarina Wiegman swiftly identified the leadership skills required to galvanise her Lionesses. Wiegman tends to utlisse her as part of a double deep midfield pivot alongside Keira Walsh. Brought up in Milton Keynes - where her mother played football for the local Ladies side - as part of a family of Arsenal fanatics Williamson joined the north London club’s centre of excellence at the age of nine. Bar a brief flirtation with an alternative career in athletics - she was an excellent cross country runner - she has subsequently never strayed too far from a football pitch. Much of the spare time of her spare time is taken up by studying to become an accountant once she eventually retires from playing.
Keira Walsh
Date of birth: 8 April 1997 (25)
Position: Midfield
Club: Manchester City
As a child, Rochdale born Walsh was so obsessed with Manchester City that she named her two goldfish after a pair of City strikers: Shaun Goater and Nicolas Anelka. Spotting his daughter’s aptitude for the game, Walsh’s father routinely spent two hours every evening coaching her in the field opposite their house. Later she would spent hours studying videos of the positioning and movement of City midfielders, most notably David Silva and Yaya Toure. She originally joined Blackburn’s academy as a right footed left back but emerged to join City as a technically proficient midfielder anchor with an eye for a pass. Nick Cushing, City’s former manager once described Walsh as “the most tactically intelligent player I’ve ever worked with.” She has rebuffed interest from Lyon and Atletico Madrid in order to remain at City.
See also:
Jill Scott
Date of birth: February 2 1987 (age 35)
Position: Midfield
Club: Aston Villa (on loan from Manchester City)
As a Sunderland Harrier, Scott was crowned the U-13 North of England cross country champion and those long legs have subsequently served the dynamic 5ft 11 midfielder well on the football pitch. Indeed an England squad would simply not seem right without the on field incision and dressing room humour of a player awarded the MBE in 2020. As a member of the Lionesses’s exclusive 150 caps and counting club, Scott’s repertoire of wonderfully dry one liners have enlivened many a training camp. Although England’s former manager Phil Neville said he expected her to still be playing at 40, she is already planning a longer term future amalgamating coaching with running Boxx2Boxx, the popular coffee shop she and her partner, Shelly Unitt own in Manchester.
Georgia Stanway
Date of birth: 3 January 1999 (23)
Position forward/midfield
Club: Manchester City
Brought up by a family of Newcastle United fans who idolised Alan Shearer, Stanway has scored plenty of goals which Shearer would treasure. The 2019 PFA Young Player of the Year is from Barrow in Cumbria and switches off from football by making regular trips back up the M6 to the Lake District; “It’s so beautiful and it’s where I feel at peace,” she says. Having started out as a striker, Stanway has gradually morphed into a technically assured goal-scoring midfielder but City’s raft of injuries earlier this season dictated that she had a run at right back and was even selected as back up goalkeeper for one game. Incredibly, and creditably, she is currently Manchester City women’s all time record goal-scorer.
Fran Kirby
Date of birth: 29 June 1993 (29)
Position: forward/attacking midfield
Club: Chelsea
The former England manager Mark Sampson dubbed Kirby “our Mini Messi” after she scored in a 2-1 win over Mexico in the 2015 World Cup in Canada and seven years on Chelsea’s attacking playmaker remains one of Sarina Wiegman’s most important players. A rare talent on the pitch, she has overcome considerable adversity of it. Her mother Denise’s sudden death from a brain haemorrhage when Kirby was only 14 triggered the onset of severe depression which afflicted her for several years. Then in 2019, a (non covid) virus left her with pericarditis or inflammation of the heart. For a while Kirby’s career seemed under real threat but after the best part of a year on the sidelines she returned in the finest form of her career before being diagnosed with a fatigue problem in April 2022. Denise Kirby always joked that her daughter was destined to be a footballer after the three year old Fran began insisting on kicking rather than catching balls.
Lauren Hemp
Date of birth: 7 August 2000 (age 21)
Position: Winger/forward
Club: Manchester City
Voted the PFA’s young female player of the year in 2018, 2019 and 2020 and identified as one of the ten most promising women footballers in Europe two years ago, Hemp is already an integral part of Sarina Wiegman’s England. Yet rather than allowing a litany of accolades go to her head the goal-scoring winger is described as “one of the most humble players I’ve met” by her City team-mate Ellen White. Meanwhile City’s manager, Gareth Taylor says: “Lauren doesn’t know how good she is.” Hemp left her family home in North Norfolk at the age of 16 to join Bristol City, arriving at Manchester City in 2018 and has never looked back. Kelly Smith, once England’s finest forward recently said of her: “There are not too many players that get me off my seat but Lauren Hemp is one. When she gets the ball, she makes things happen, she dribbles so fast, she’s lethal.”
Ellen White
Date of birth: 9 May 1989 (33)
Position: Striker
Club: Manchester City
England’s record goal-scorer and a member of the ultra select 100 caps plus club, White is integral to Sarina Wiegman’s team. Whenever she scores - a frequent occurrence - she indulges in a hallmark “goggles” celebration. It is copied from her hero Anthony Modeste and intended as a tribute to the Cologne striker. Although the Aylesbury bred White was brought up as a West Ham fan she and her husband Callum Convery (a football development officer with the Derbyshire FA who she met when they were studying for sports science degrees at Loughborough University) are big fans of the Bundesliga and both fell for both Cologne and Modeste during one of their regular trips to Germany. The couple also take a big interest in Oldham Athletic women where they are kit sponsors. Sarina Wiegman has identified White as England’s ‘third captain” who will take the armband should Leah Williamson and Millie Bright be unavailable.
Beth Mead
Date of birth: 9 May 1995 (27)
Position: Forward/winger
Club: Arsenal
Dubbed “the Hinderwell hot-shot”, Mead grew up within the North Yorkshire Moors national park in the village of Hinderwell, near Whitby. Her first team was the Middlesbrough based California Girls and she subsequently combined playing in the WSL for Sunderland with completing a sports development degree at Teesside University. The PFA’s 2016 Young female player of the Year, she arrived at Arsenal as a goal-scoring centre forward but morphed into a winger or deep lying forward after Vivianne Miedema’s arrival in North London in 2017. Now a resident of St Albans, she is regularly seen walking her dog, Rona (purchased during lockdown and named after Coronavirus) in the nearby Hertfordshire countryside. Disappointed to have been omitted from the 2021 GB Olympic squad Mead has a point to prove this summer.
Nikita Parris
Date of birth: 10 March 1994 (28)
Position: Forward
Club: Arsenal
Parris possesses adhesive close control, stellar dribbling skills, improvisational vision, a searing change of pace, directness, an impressive work ethic - and a nice line in practical jokes. A player whose wit is as sharp as her feet claims her best trick involved putting salt instead of sugar in the former England manager Phil Neville’s tea during the 2019 World Cup in France. The deep lying or wide forward, grew up in the Toxteth area of Liverpool, forming her own girls team at the age of 11. The sports development graduate from Merseyside’s John Moores University subsequently played for Everton and Manchester City before spending two years with France’s all conquering Lyon where, during her second season, she scored 19 goals in 28 appearances. Having grown up idolising Arsenal women’s Julie Fleeting and her men’s counterpart Thierry Henry, Parris believes her 2021 move to North London was “destiny”.
Alessia Russo
Date of birth: 8 February 1999 (23)
Position: Centre forward
Club: Manchester United
Russo is the scorer of the fastest ever hat-trick registered by a female England player, her treble arriving in the space of 11 minutes during the 20-0 demolition of Latvia last November on only her second senior appearance as a Lioness. Like Sarina Wiegman, Lucy Bronze and Lottie Wubben-Moy she played for North Carolina Tar Heels while on a sports scholarship (in Russo’s case also involving geology) in the United States. She is of Italian descent, her Sicilian grandfather having emigrated to England in the 1950s and, despite growing up in Maidstone, Kent has inherited her family’s love of Manchester United. A swift and powerful striker, strong in the air and excellent at holding the ball up, Russo came through Charlton’s academy and had stints with Chelsea and Brighton before completing a “surreal” move to Manchester United. Her father Mario formerly led the line for the Met Police first XI.
Bethany England
Date of birth: 3 June 1994 (28)
Position: Centre forward
Club: Chelsea
England would be one of the first names on the team-sheets at most WSL clubs but the formidable litany of attacking talent at Chelsea sees her competing with, among others, Sam Kerr, Pernille Harder and Fran Kirby for a starting place. If England does not always enjoy as many minutes on the pitch as she would ideally like, she is enormously busy off it as she juggles life with her partner, the Oxford United midfielder Stephanie Williams with studying for a law degree.
Born and brought up in Barnsley, England initially played alongside her twin sister Laura at Sheffield United’s academy. This summer she hopes to recapture her outstanding pre pandemic form which saw her score 21 goals in 24 games during the 2019-20 season and be crowned the WSL’s player of the year. At the time Emma Hayes, Chelsea’s manager called England “the best English no9 in the country.”
Ella Toone
Date of birth: 2 September 1999 (22)
Position: Forward
Club: Manchester United
As adept at creating goals as scoring them, Toone can invariably be found at, or near, the top of the WSL assists charts. Her excellent movement and capacity for delivering defence bisecting through passes make her ideally suited to Marc Skinner’s fluid attacking line at United. From Tyldesley near Wigan, she is a lifelong United fan but played for City before crossing Manchester’s great divide. In April this year Toone became the first United player to register 100 appearances for a club only re-formed in 2018. She now models parts of her game on that of a men’s counterpart: Bruno Fernandes but as a little girl playing football in her back garden Toone always used to pretend she was Cristiano Ronaldo.
Chloe Kelly
Date of birth: 15 January 1998 (24)
Position: Forward
Club: Manchester City
Kelly is the youngest of seven siblings (including five brothers and one set of triplets) and grew up in Ealing, West London honing her skills in gravel pitched football cages. That education served the former Arsenal and Everton forward well. Her amalgam of scoring incision, scorching pace, audacious dribbling and tight control ensure Kelly is comfortable playing anywhere across the frontline. Outrageous long range goals - dipping, swerving, worldies - are a speciality but, right now, Kelly is simply delighted to be back not just in the England squad - but on a football pitch. After rupturing her ACL last May she endured long, slow months of rehabilitation before finally returning to City’s first team in a win against West Ham in April.