Mary Earps Set To Become First Keeper To Record 50 Shutouts In WSL

England’s number one, Mary Earps, is poised this weekend to become the first goalkeeper in the 13-year history of the Women’s Super League (WSL) to prevent the opposition from scoring against her in 50 matches after keeping her 49th ‘clean sheet’ in last Sunday’s 6-0 win for Manchester United over Liverpool.

In her 154 appearances in the WSL so far – a record for a goalkeeper – Earps has made 474 saves and kept 49 clean sheets, four more shutouts than Chelsea’s Ann-Katrin Berger and eight more than her England understudy, Ellie Roebuck. Earps confessed in a recent film that she hated conceding any goal, so for her is a 1-0 win better than a 6-1 victory? “Oh yeah, without a doubt”, she told me. “It just doesn’t feel the same. I think all defenders can relate, all goalkeepers can relate.”

32 of Earps’ cleen sheets have been made since she joined Manchester United in 2019, with the club recording more shutouts this season (seven) than any other team in the league. Despite several high-scoring victories, Earps revealed to me that keeping the opposition out is something she recently discussed with center-back Millie Turner. “Teams are always going to have opportunities, whether it’s a counter-attack or a set-piece and for us, as defenders we want to make sure it’s 5-0 and not 5-1. Even if it was 10-1 or 20-1, it just doesn’t have quite the same feel. So yeah, it feels so much more satisfying when you see the ‘nil'”.

When she does concede a goal, Earps confessed that she is affected by it. “I’d definitely be moody about it after the game. Definitely. I’d probably speak to my goalkeeper coach about it and we’ll have a little quick debrief about it on the pitch and get the initial emotions of it out of the way. Say what I felt, what I saw, if I could have done better, or if the team could have done better, what my feelings were and if that was something I wanted to then work on in that training week.”

“I try and just allow myself to feel whatever I want to feel directly after the game. Then the next day, I kind of just try and wipe it and move on to the next challenge. In this league and in this game, the next fixture comes thick and fast so you can’t really dwell, or let it affect your preparation for the next game so I think it’s just trying to use it to learn and develop and to train something different.”

This season, Earps has been aided by having a settled back line in front of her with Turner partnered by new signing Maya Le Tissier between regular full-backs Ona Batlle and Hannah Blundell and behind defensive midfielder Hayley Ladd. “The more that you can have that consistency and work with the same players, I do think that’s a huge benefit” said Earps. “You know what their attributes are, what they’re going to do in certain situations, you can pre-empt it, which then might change my decisions slightly.”

Last weekend’s draw between Arsenal and Chelsea allowed Manchester United to move up into second place in the WSL table, three points behind the leaders with a game in hand. However, Earps tells me that the title is not yet on the players’ minds. “We’ve not really spoken about it. For us, our priority is Champions League, but also it’s about getting as many points as possible and performing to our best every single game.”

Earps’ own future may depend on Manchester United finishing in the top three and securing a place in next season’s Champions League. With her contract due to end in June, she is free to speak to other clubs about a potential move in the summer but also has an option to sign on for another year with her current club. She told me “I think it’s a little uncertain and I think it’s something that’s evolving. The conversations (with United) are happening so we’ll have to see how it pans out. I want to play Champions League football and that’s kind of how I feel so we’ll just have to see how everything unfolds I think. Time will tell with that one.”

Last week, Earps was one of six goalkeepers shortlisted for The Best FIFA Women’s Goalkeeper award. After deactivating her Twitter account before the UEFA Women’s Euro, Earps had no idea she’d been nominated until her agent sent her a text wishing her congratulations with a link to the FIFA announcement. “I was just so happy really” she tells me, “so chuffed.”

“To be named on that shortlist is an incredible honor. There’s not many goalkeeping awards out there so to be named among the top six best in the world is something that means a lot to me. It’s a great feeling after how the last eighteen months have gone, but the two years prior to that were really different so it feels really rewarding to look back on a chapter of my life and say ‘yeah, you fought back, you came through it and look at what you achieved now’. I’m really proud of it and I’m also really happy for Alessia (Russo) that she got nominated for the Puskás Award as well. An incredible feeling and a real honor, really”.

Up alongside last year’s winner, Lyon’s Christiane Endler, Barcelona’s Sandra Paños, Chelsea’s Ann-Katrin Berger, Alyssa Naeher of the Chicago Red Stars and Wolfsburg’s Merle Frohms, Earps is hard-pushed to pick her favorite. “In terms of the best goalkeeper in recent years and somebody I think is very, very good, I’d put Endler up there. I think she’s a phenomenal goalkeeper to be honest but if you’re talking form, I’d probably put Merle up there for Wolfsburg, she’s been really good and for Germany so I think you’d probably go maybe between those two.”

In 2018, Earps was signed by Wolfsburg to replace the departing Frohms, who has since returned this summer to claim the number one position for the German champions. The two went head-to-head in the UEFA Women’s Euro final and amidst the euphoria of victory, Earps could not recall speaking with her opposite number. “You know, that’s one of the things that I look back on. I can’t really remember what happened after the final whistle. I was so in it, the fact that we’d won and it was like a life’s work that had all come to fruition in one moment. There was tears, there was jumps for joy, there was running trying to find my family in the crowd, I was speaking to my team-mates but I didn’t really see too many of the German players.”

All of this was a stark contrast to the previous summer when Earps had been left out of the Great Britain squad to travel to the Tokyo Olympics. 21-year-old Roebuck played every game and seemed set to be England’s first choice for years to come until the new manager brought about a change in fortune for the Manchester United goalkeeper.

When Sarina Wiegman became England head coach in September 2021, Roebuck was injured and Earps seized her opportunity. “We had a meeting on my first camp, I think it was maybe the second or third day. It was a really emotional meeting. She said she’d been watching me and had been impressed with me. I was just so surprised. I just couldn’t believe it because I’d not been in the England set-up for almost two years so I just couldn’t even believe I was in her thoughts at all. I was still processing the fact that she had brought me back into the fold.”

“Football can be a little bit emotional sometimes when everything happened the way it did, that’s where she wanted to know my back story a bit, to understand where I was at. We just had a big heart-to-heart. I think she was surprised by some of the things I told her and she basically said ‘I’ve been impressed with your form and you’re going to start’. I was just blown away, I was just like ‘thank you, thank you!’

“Everything that had happened, I thought my international career was over,” admits Earps. “I’ve been really open about that. This whole thing has been very unexpected. It was clear to me that my international career was done and at one point in time, I thought my football career in general was finished. So I never, ever expected to be in an England squad again, let alone play for England or win a Euro or be named in the top six goalkeepers. I never, ever thought any of these things would have happened. I thought the book was closed. Everything that happens now, I just feel like it a bonus and I try to treat it as such.”