How Beth Mead went from fringe player to pride of the Lionesses

After another clinical display from England at the Women’s Euro 2022 on Friday night, beating Northern Ireland 5-0 in Southampton, two of the crowd chants stuck in the mind. The first related to the Lionesses winger who has now scored five goals in three matches, and went to the tune of Gala’s 1997 hit Freed from Desire. “Beth Mead’s on fire,” fans sang. “Your defence is terrified! Na-na-na!”

The other song, less original, will be familiar to England supporters over the past 26 years: “It’s coming home! It’s coming home! It’s coming … Football’s coming home!” The Lionesses, like the men’s team, have historically underperformed in major tournaments, but at this summer’s home Euros there is genuine, realistic optimism that this time will be different. In three games so far, England have scored 14 goals, conceded none. The next test of Sarina Wiegman’s squad is the quarter-final in Brighton on Wednesday evening.

There’s little debate about who has been the breakout star of the 2022 Euros. Indeed, the tournament has been renamed, in some quarters, the “Beth Mead Revenge Tour”. Last summer, the 27-year-old Arsenal forward was left out of the Team GB squad for the Olympics. Since that point, Mead appears to have been wreaking ruthless vengeance on opposition defences: in an England shirt, she has scored 19 goals in 16 appearances, including the winner against Austria, three more against Norway (astonishingly, her fourth international hat-trick in nine months) and another against Northern Ireland.

England’s 8-0 routing of Norway, in particular, has sent the Euros into a scramble. Norway are no one’s definition of footballing minnows: they are ranked 11th in the world and have players at many of the top clubs. But England, and