Preparing to take on Barcelona in the Champions League final has put Beth Mead in a reflective mood last week – and she admits she initially struggled to adapt to life at Arsenal after joining the club eight years ago.
The Arsenal striker lost her mum June to ovarian cancer in January 2023, just weeks after winning the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award, and has credited her with being a huge influence on a hugely successful career.
Mead burst onto the scene with Sunderland as a teenager, helping them earn back-to-back promotions into the Women’s Super League and finishing their first season in the top flight as the division’s top scorer in 2015 aged just 20.
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Beth Mead: ‘Things were hard at Arsenal from day one. Being in London was like being in another world’
In the Players’ Tribune, Mead paid tribute to her mother’s reassuring influence after getting a big move to Arsenal in 2017.
Mead grew up in a small village near the North Yorkshire seaside town of Whitby, and initially found it difficult to get used to living in London – particularly as her first season at Arsenal was hit by back-to-back injuries.
Mead said: “I was banging in goals and had all this success and we had promotion after promotion. When I was 20, I became the youngest top scorer in WSL history. I couldn’t believe it… and then Arsenal came in for me.
“Things were hard from day one. Being in London was like being in another world.
“I was struggling. I kept calling my mum, like: ‘I can’t do this’. She’d be at work, in the classroom, having to duck into a supply closet to take my call so she wouldn’t get in trouble. She always knew what to say. Always had a way of calming me down.
“[She’d say]: ‘One step at a time, Beth. Break your day down: Get up, go have breakfast, go have a coffee, then get in your car…. Break it all up. Because each time you do one of those little things, you’re achieving something’.
“I was already injured when I signed for the club. It only added to all this anxiety — moving clubs, moving cities, the injury, the rehab — and a new manager to impress.
“But I thought, football’s always been the thing I can fall back on, so all I had to do was get up, have my coffee, and show them what I can do.
“My first session, I was on it. I was playing great. And then I went in for a 50-50 with the goalkeeper and I go flying. I flip over the top of her and I break my collarbone. Back at square one again. Rock bottom. Injured. Alone. No football for six weeks.
“My mum had to come down and see me in London every weekend, and during the week she’d be ringing me: ‘You feeling better today, Beth?’
“She was on edge because I was, too. I know that was so hard for her. When she’d come to see me, I’d always walk her to the train station, not wanting her to go.
When I’d get back to my room, I’d flop down on the bed and under my pillow, I’d find a note – ‘Love you loads’ – with these three little hearts underneath it. Sometimes that’s all you need.”
