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Mary Earps does not like the word "quit".
She also bristles at the suggestion she retired from the Lionesses simply because she was no longer the "number one" goalkeeper.
"That couldn’t be further from the truth, but I have to accept that’s an assumption that people can make," she told me.
The reality, Earps insists, is very different and involved a loss of trust in manager Sarina Wiegman, who rewarded the "bad behaviour" of her goalkeeping rival Hannah Hampton.
In her first television interview ahead of the publication of her revealing autobiography, All In: Football, Life and Learning to be Unapologetically Me, we discuss those relationships, the tensions within the Lionesses set-up, and much more.
I spoke to Earps in the days before her book was serialised in the Guardian newspaper, and she was clearly nervous about how her story would be received.
"It’s scary to put a book out there, especially as a current player. You don’t know what kind of ribbing you’re going to get behind the goal from now on," she said.
"But I hope people will appreciate my vulnerability. I think it’s hard to put your heart and soul out there because you’re opening yourself up to criticism. And then what I experienced in the summer, I think it scars you a little bit.
"I had a great conversation with someone who said if somebody asked you what your book was about, what would you rather them say ‘that it was open, that it was vulnerable?’, or that ‘you barely said anything at all?’.
"I think I’m proud of how open I’ve been. Whether or not people wish that I’d said less is another thing."
Within 24 hours of the first extracts appearing in print, Earps was accused by Hampton’s coach at Chelsea, Sonia Bompastor, of an "unacceptable" lack of respect, and implied Earps lacked class.
Earps herself later released a statement calling some of the reaction to the serialisation "gut-wrenching" and urging readers to "see through the headlines… This has been an incredibly difficult 24 hours," she wrote on Instagram.
The tone of her "gloves off" memoir will surprise many, as will the news that one of England’s most decorated and most loved Lionesses suffered matchday panic attacks, struggled with her fame, spent much of her last year in the England set-up alone in her room in tears, and, shockingly, during lockdown, considered taking her own life.
"There were definitely conversations in my head that I wish didn’t happen if the truth be told," Earps told me.
"And that’s painful to admit now when I think about, you know, all the incredible people I have in my life and who that would have potentially hurt."
For more than a year before her retirement, Earps says she sought clarity from Wiegman about her goalkeeping plans, but never got a direct answer.
When I asked whether she thought Wiegman’s treatment of her was cruel, Earps said: "I think that she found the situation difficult.
"I think that I would have preferred her to have been more direct with me, but she did what she felt was best for the team and for her.
"I don’t want to say it’s cruel, no. I think Sarina did the best that she could. I don’t know if she looks back now and maybe wishes she’d said things slightly differently."
At the heart of Earps’s turmoil was teammate Hannah Hampton. She was Earps’s understudy at the 2022 Euros and was subsequently dropped from the squad by Wiegman because of her attitude.
Earps writes that in the post-tournament review "the only negative that each group reported back on" was Hampton’s behaviour, "which was overwhelmingly considered disruptive and unreliable, with a risk of being destructive, taking energy and time from coaches who needed to work with the rest of the team."
Nevertheless, Wiegman recalled Hampton to the squad the following year ahead of the World Cup in Australia.
Earps believes that the return changed the dynamic inside the England camp.
"I think it was different and it was something we had to continuously work at. I definitely didn’t enjoy the England camps as much as I would like, which played a part in my decision," she said.
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