In this My Game In My Words series, The Athletic builds towards the Women’s World Cup by talking to leading players around the world to find out how they think about football, why they play the way they do and to reflect — through looking back at their key career moments — on their achievements so far.
Through the Keyhole with Beth Mead and Vivianne Miedema might be a little too easy. There are too many giveaways. Mead’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year trophy lives next to the TV. Then there is the shelf behind her, where she keeps her Player of the Tournament trophy from Euro 2022 and her winners’ medal. The tallest — Miedema’s PFA Women’s Players’ Player of the Year trophy from 2019 — stands at the side.
The clothes horse peeking into the bottom right of the Zoom call feels apt for the house where Miedema lives, the juxtaposition of the mundane and the extraordinary calling to mind that easy, languid gait with which she so often does the outrageous.
Of all Mead has won in the past year, SPOTY, she says, is the one that will never feel real. “I sit there and look at the trophy and the names on it,” she says, “and I still don’t believe it’s something I have my name on. Jill Scott said to me a couple of weeks ago: ‘I don’t think you…
