The rise and rise of Beth Mead： Euro 22 winner and now Spoty winner

中文乱码永远有效2021

From plus one to runaway favourite. If there was any risk of England’s Beth Mead getting carried away with her golden boot-winning and player of the tournament heroics as the Lionesses won a first major trophy at the Euros in the summer, then it was quickly stomped on in October.

The forward was photographed at the Ballon d’Or awards ceremony alongside her partner, her Arsenal teammate Vivianne Miedema, and the caption on the image read: “Vivianne Miedema and a guest”. That “guest”, who laughed off the error, would go on to finish as runner-up to Barcelona’s Alexia Putellas for the international award after a stellar year, but the miscaptioning spoke to just how rapid a rise Mead’s has been on the global stage.

On home soil, Mead’s profile has exploded since the final at Wembley. The 27-year-old has become the first female football player, and just the sixth footballer (after Bobby Moore, Paul Gascoigne, Michael Owen, David Beckham and Ryan Giggs), to win BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

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It is deserved, but it is also bittersweet, because, when Mead went up on stage to collect the trophy, she did so with a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament injury that has probably ended her season and destroyed any hope of carrying her form for England into the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in July. Her “guest” on the night, Miedema, shared that journey after rupturing the ACL in her left knee in Arsenal’s 1-0 defeat to Lyon, less than a month after Mead suffered hers in a 3-2 loss to Manchester United.

Mead, though, is used to fighting back stronger. The Whitby-born player’s phenomenal 2022 – in which she scored the most goals and created the most assists and chances at the Euros, after creating 64 chances for Arsenal in the calendar year and finishing the season as the fans’ player of the season and the WSL all-time leader in assists – came after the bitter disappointment at being omitted from the Team GB squad for the Olympics.

Mead scored twice in Arsenal’s 3-2 defeat of Chelsea on the opening day of the new season after being left out of the squad for Tokyo and she didn’t look back. After her third hat-trick for England in six months, following the arrival of the new England manager, Sarina Wiegman, Mead said her confidence had been restored and that she had “channelled my disappointment in the correct way”.

Mead’s talent has been long known by those that have watched the women’s game. She was recruited by Arsenal in 2017 after she scored 77 goals in 78 games for Sunderland. In her first season with the Black Cats, she finished as the National League top scorer with 23 goals in 23 games as Sunderland won the league and the FA Women’s Premier League Cup.

In her second season she bagged 30 goals in 28 games. The following year, 2014, she led the line as Sunderland earned promotion to the Women’s Super League 欧VODAFONEWIFI18 and then scored in the team’s stunning 2-1 defeat of the then champions, Liverpool, in their first match in the top flight before going on to finish the season as the league’s top scorer.

It was her angry and aggressive side being brought out that the then England manager, Phil Neville, said would take her to the next level. After England’s 2-0 win over Denmark before the 2019 World Cup, he said: “The penny has dropped. It’s like: ‘Do you want to go to Blackpool on your holidays or do you want to go to the moon?’ She now wants to go to the moon. Before she was happy to go to Whitley Bay 夜里用的18款禁用 and have fish and chips.”

在她的位置不确定的情况下，她强行进入了世界杯的争夺。“她已经准备好上场了，”内维尔当时说。“六个月前她不是。我们对她骂得很凶，她也知道。我们不得不对一个可能处于她满意水平的人说一些不为人知的事实。但我们知道她可以达到一个不同的水平。”

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奥运会上的失望让她更接近于在球场上充分发挥自己的潜力，但更深层次的心碎让她更迫切地想要达到最高的高度。米德的母亲琼在2021年被诊断出癌症晚期。

米德在获得斯波蒂提名后接受BBC采访时表示:“我知道我的余生都不会再和妈妈分享那些时光了，所以去年夏天能和她分享那一刻真是太不可思议了。”“对我来说，足球一直是我的第一真爱。

“我妈妈牺牲了太多，她打两份工，如果没有她们，我不可能有今天。将近一年之后，我们发现这种病是无法治愈的。她还在战斗。”

她的父亲理查德说:“她母亲的诊断，是她向世界展示贝丝·米德真实身份的导火索。我认为她在欧洲杯上做到了。”