‘I had to be a rebel to play football’: England’s Leah Williamson on beating sexism, self-doubt and winning the Euros

W hen Leah Williamson was seven, her father told her he didn’t want to hear any excuses. If she really wanted to become a professional footballer, and was prepared to put the effort in, there was no reason why she shouldn’t succeed. Today, Williamson is one of the best-paid women in the game and captain of an England team that hasn’t lost for 29 matches, including the final of last year’s Euros.

What makes her father’s words remarkable is that, at the time, there was no professional women’s league in England. Even more remarkably, when she was a toddler her parents feared that she might never walk properly. Williamson was born with inward-pointing toes. “If they couldn’t have fixed it, it would have created problems when I started to grow. I would have had to wears braces on my legs,” she says.

Doctors suggested to her parents that horse riding or gymnastics could help straighten her feet. So, at the age of two, Williamson started gymnastics, which she did four times a week for seven years. This proved the catalyst for her love of football. If they finished early on a Friday, her gymnastics coach would get a football out and the kids would have a kickabout. Before long, Williamson was thinking more about whether she would focus on football or gymnastics than whether her pigeon toes would leave her disabled. At nine, she joined Arsenal’s youth programme. Sixteen years on, she wants to make sure that this generation of aspiring Leah Williamsons are given the same kind of opportunities her family gave her.

When we talk for the first time, she tells me it’s six months to the day since England won the Euros. “It still gives me goosebumps,” Williamson says. No wonder. For many of us, it wasn’t just the greatest sporting