Leah Williamson: England captain on World Cup dreams and life away from football

The Football Interview is a new series in which the biggest names in sport and entertainment join host Kelly Somers for bold and in-depth conversations about the nation’s favourite sport.

We’ll explore mindset and motivation, and talk about defining moments, career highs and personal reflections. The Football Interview brings you the person behind the player.

Interviews will drop on weekends across BBC iPlayer, YouTube, BBC Sounds and the BBC Sport website. This week’s interview will be broadcast on BBC One from 23:50 BST on Saturday, 28 February.

Leah Williamson has won almost everything there is to win in women’s football.

Twice a European champion as England captain, she has also lifted every trophy available to her during a 20-year career with Arsenal – including the Champions League and inaugural Women’s Champions Cup.

Now she wants the World Cup.

In a wide-ranging interview, Williamson tells Kelly Somers she considered turning her back on football as a teenager before a conversation with her mum convinced her to stick with it. She also talks about her love of fashion and how music helps her switch off from the pressures of the day job.

Kelly Somers: Leah, nice to see you – thank you for your time. Let’s start with football. I want to know the first time you played football, your first memories and also – because of something you’ve just said to me off camera – how good were you?

Leah Williamson: The first time I ever played football, my memory was at gymnastics. I must have been five or six. We were just waiting for our parents at the end to pick us up and the coach was a football fan, so we just got out a soft ball. My first proper memory is playing for my local team, but my mum says it was painful.

Kelly: Because you weren’t very good?!

Leah: Yeah. She’s like: ‘You go and support your kids, but at the same time, it wasn’t thrilling to watch. It’s not like I was holding out that you were going to be a footballer.’

Kelly: When you were little, though, it probably wasn’t something that she would have envisaged for her daughter anyway, was it?

Leah: No, definitely not. Especially because she couldn’t have played football – she had to pretend to be a boy, so she’s thinking, ‘all right, we’ll just see how far this goes’. I used to toe-punt it. I couldn’t kick the ball properly until I was 10 or something.

Kelly: That gives every parent of young children hope, listening to that!

Leah: Yeah, there’s no stress.

Kelly: What was the name of your first team? What can you remember of it?

Leah: Scots Youth FC. I was the only girl, but I was very well protected within my team. Still… with other teams, it wasn’t great.

Kelly: They targeted you, do you think, because you were the girl?

Leah: It was more parents… like: ‘Don’t let her do that to you, she’s a girl.’

Kelly: I wonder what they’re saying now. Those parents are probably like: ‘I remember her.’

Leah: If I saw them, they’d probably be like: ‘Oh, we used to play together.’ I’d be like: ‘No, you used to give me a hard time.’

Kelly: Was there a point where you thought, ‘OK, I could make this. This is actually something that could be a career’? I imagine – going back to being a girl as well – it probably isn’t something that’s thought about quite as much…

Leah: I had a conversation with my mum when I was about 15 and I said: ‘I’m probably going to stop now.’ She was like: ‘All right, you tell them then.’ I was too scared…

Kelly: Did you actually, genuinely think…

Leah: Yeah, we had a conversation out there in the car park and I was just like: ‘I’m tired, you’re tired, we’re travelling a lot, it costs a lot of money and I’m not sure… it’s a bit of a gamble, it’s not professional.’

My dad always said I’d be able to earn a wage one day. I don’t know where he had that idea from, but he was very much like, ‘keep going, follow your dreams’ kind of thing, whereas I was a bit more pragmatic, I’d say. I’m a bit of a worrier and, also, I wasn’t the loudest footballer, I wouldn’t say. A couple of my team-mates would get chats from the first team and that wasn’t really coming my way, so I was just being a bit realistic, like: ‘Maybe it’s not for me.’ But I stuck it out.

Kelly: It’s a good job you did really, isn’t it?

Leah: I’m happy I did. But, yeah, I’d say once I got into the first team, I was still a bit like, ‘all right, let’s see what happens’ and then I decided I didn’t want to go to university. I think that’s then why I fully committed. Then on my 18th birthday, I signed my professional contract. The other option for a lot of us was going to America and going to get a scholarship.

Kelly: Did you consider that?

Leah: Yeah – like Bend It Like Beckham… I’m watching that as a kid and thinking, ‘yeah, I want to do that’. So, that was a consideration and then the game here just picked up, picked up, and I thought, ‘I don’t want to leave this – this is too exciting to not be a part of for me’.

Kelly: Has there been a turning point? Like a moment where – other than that conversation you had with your mum – if it hadn’t happened, maybe all of the success wouldn’t have followed?

Leah: The 2015 World Cup. Like, the prep camps – you’d normally bring in a bigger squad and you’d have these reserve players playing with you. I’d been playing for Arsenal and I’d done a season… so I’d turned a few heads, let’s say.

Kelly: People knew who you were?

Leah: Yeah – and I got a call from the manager. It was Mark Sampson at the time. I’d just got injured, but he called me to say: ‘I was going to bring you into the prep camp, but don’t worry about your injury – hopefully there will be a next time.’ It didn’t happen for me then. I came back and it happened again. I’m not sure if I’d just missed my opportunity. I think that moment in my head… then I realised how much I cared about it. Instead of just letting things happen to me, I was like: ‘No, I’m going to try.’ And then the England call-up came and I think that was when I was like: ‘This is like a career thing now.’

Kelly: I was trying to second guess your answer for this, but I think it’s impossible. If you could relive one match from your career, what would it be? We speak to a lot of people for this and they’ve got some good matches, but your list of good matches is up there.

Leah: Yeah, it’s up there. I wouldn’t relive the Champions League final! I was in a lot of pain from start to finish – emotionally, physically. It was very warm, I was on the verge of sunstroke… I was not in a good place.

Kelly: Just relive the celebrations if you want…

Leah: Yeah, like the rest of it and the big picture – great. The game, I would go back to is 2022 [the Euros final]. From the minute we walked out of the tunnel, I just… it was like playing a game where you just know you’re going to win. Obviously I understand that there was a chance we weren’t going to win, but everything about it just was like, ‘no, we’re going to win today’. It was really enjoyable from the minute it started. It was only when they scored that I thought…

Kelly: ‘This isn’t the plan…’

Leah: ‘That is not what I thought was going to happen.’ Extra time… just everything about it… Wembley, 90,000 people… insane. Insane.

Kelly: And probably the impact after… did you realise quite what you’d done?

Leah: I think it’s very rare when you’re living something that you realise what’s happening… and I think everybody did such a good job to shut the world out from us during that tournament, whilst also drip-feeding enough for us to know.

Kelly: Were they?

Leah: I don’t know if it was just being in England…

Kelly: Did you shut yourself off from it?

Leah: Yeah – just how I have my social media now. I don’t see things that I don’t want to see. I’ve set it all up to protect me in that way. I think when we went to Wembley… the helicopter followed us from the hotel in the coach, then you arrive at Wembley and there’s just people everywhere. And then you come out to warm up and you think, ‘we’re basically playing a home fixture’. It felt like 90,000 England fans. It was just the most incredible…I don’t assume anything will ever touch it, just because it was the home tournament… the first ever, you know.

Kelly: It gives me goosebumps when we talk about it. I was there and I can remember the feeling. I think that everyone in the stadium that day felt that.

Leah: I think that’s the beauty of it – everybody knew what they were a part of. You can go deeper into the history of women’s football, but you can also just go to the first trophy, for 56 years or whatever it was, that England had won.

Kelly: It was a moment in history. It was a moment in time. I think we’ve seen since that it was life-changing for you guys, for so many people.

Leah: It changed the landscape of football and I’m so happy that we won it because I think the country was ready to do something with it and I think we’ve seen that.

Kelly: How’s it changed your life?

Leah: It changed everything. We just went from no-one knowing us to everybody knowing us overnight, kind of thing. It’s a common understanding amongst all of us girls and we talk about it… we had to accept that we probably would never feel that way again. It was that big a moment and I think that does change your life. Does it give you a fuel to then go and do something else or is it like, ‘I’m content with that’?

Kelly: You mentioned there the fuel. It gave you the fuel to do it again, didn’t it?

Leah: It did. It did.

Kelly: How does that compare?

Leah: It’s just completely different. 2025 Euros – I’ve never seen a group of people come together and just not give in. Obviously, for me, I was really injured by the time I got to the end of the final.

Kelly: That’s why I wasn’t surprised that you didn’t want to relive that game.

Leah: It was more like a mental challenge of, ‘you’re OK, you’re OK, you’re OK’… which is very different to, ‘I literally feel untouchable’ in 2022.

Kelly: Let’s try and talk about you away from the pitch a little bit. What were you like, firstly, growing up? What was a young Leah Williamson like?

Leah: Insufferable, I’ve been told by my cousins!

Kelly: Your cousins?

Leah: Yeah. We always joke because you lose confidence as you turn into an adult, I think. Obviously, you’re fearless as a kid, but I was a bit of a performer, let’s put it that way. I owned the spaces I went into. I was very much the same as I am now, in terms of being like… if I was told to do something, I did it that way and… quite a measured child, I would say, which is again quite insufferable.

Kelly: You already mentioned family a few times. Because of your success they’re everywhere with you, aren’t they? Talk to me about your family dynamic and what it was like growing up and also… it feels like they’ve really been on the journey with you…

Leah: Yeah, and they love it. Whatever your event is or whatever your thing is, everybody is there and everybody takes joy in it. Everyone takes pride in it, so obviously mine has ended up being this really high-profile thing, but my mum splits her time, my dad splits his time between me and my brother.

My brother plays for our hometown team. I know I’m doing them proud and I love that, but they’ve bought into women’s football and they’re on that journey as well. My dad thinks I’m the best thing since sliced bread and I love him for that, but my mum has always been very real and very harsh as well, so I’ve always had both of those feedbacks. I think I was given a good foundation to then come into this world, which is tough to be in.

Kelly: What’s your ideal day off? How does Leah Williamson escape from football and everything that comes with it?

Leah: I think I’m quite good at it.

Kelly: Are you?

Leah: Yeah, I think I am. I think it’s a skill. You don’t get that much time off so you have to be able to switch off as quickly as possible… to live in a different world… to then come back fresh. But for me, an ideal day? I don’t know. No alarm, go to a concert, go to the theatre, something in the arts. Or even just the cinema, go for a nice meal. I love music, I love going out… the reason I love music is because I can’t be thinking about football there.

Kelly: Do you still play the piano?

Leah: I actually just… for the first time since I learned to play the piano, I’ve just got a keyboard at home. So it’s about to start up again.

Kelly: It’s getting serious!

Leah: Yeah, it’s about to start up again.

Kelly: You’re really into your fashion, aren’t you?

Leah: Yeah, I am. I like it. It’s a form of expression.

Kelly: Because even now, you’re…

Leah: I’m in the uniform. My job is uniform. And I don’t mind that. I turn up to work, but the day off for me… I want to do something where I can then put something on that makes me feel good.

Kelly: Tell me something about yourself that would surprise me.

Leah: I mean, I don’t think it’s a secret I’m a loyal person. If you look at my career – I would do anything, I would drop anything, for my people – family, friends, partner, it doesn’t matter. I think people sometimes think I’m a bit ‘stush’, if that makes sense.

Kelly: Do you think?

Leah: I think maybe sometimes. Like, I wear my heart on my sleeve – you have my opinions, you have my feelings. I get the mick taken out of me at the football. Beth [Mead] is always like, ‘Leah, smile. Look like you’re enjoying yourself,’ and I think, ‘all right, sorry,’ and I remember. But I just get very protective of my space and once the outside world’s shut off then I think I do change quite a lot compared to what goes out, if that makes sense.

Kelly: I do understand. You’ve got a lot of pressure and a lot of eyes on you, though, and I guess your role has kind of changed. You’ve become, to many people, not just a footballer. Do you know what I mean?

Leah: Yeah. It’s a feasible thing to be yourself and move in different worlds at different times and still be really good at your job.

Kelly: You’ve achieved so much. What else do you want to achieve? If you could only achieve one more thing, what would it be?

Leah: The last thing on the list is obviously a World Cup. In the career that I’ve had, it’s the last trophy.

Kelly: It’s no secret that all the other Lionesses that we’ve spoken to said exactly the same thing.

Leah: The World Cup?

Kelly: Yeah. Lucy [Bronze]… I don’t think I’d finished my sentence…

Leah: ..she said World Cup?

Kelly: And then she said it. Which probably wouldn’t surprise you, knowing Lucy either.

Leah: No, no. I speak to my team-mates and I’m like, ‘Mariona [Caldentey], you have one… do you want to do a swap… or how does this work?’

Kelly: Maybe they’ll let you have the next one.

Leah: Yeah. Everybody wants it and the stage of women’s football now, it’s just so unpredictable. There’s so many good teams – it becomes so much harder, which I think only makes you want it more.

Kelly: Leah, thank you so much for your time. I could have spoken for ages. Thank you.

Leah: Thanks for having me.

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