Mary Earps on life at PSG: ‘There was a lot of noise so it’s been nice to escape’ | OneFootball

Many of us might perceive it as a bustling metropolis full of tourist hotspots. To Mary Earps, however, Paris is noise-free. Peaceful. Beautiful. It is very rare for anybody to spot the England goalkeeper in public – unless she is at the airport or waiting to catch the Eurostar from Gare du Nord – and, for a player who shot to fame so quickly that she was the 2023 BBC Sports Personality of the Year, such relative invisibility in the City of Light is a blissful feeling.

“It’s been more refreshing than I thought it would be,” Earps says of her move to Paris Saint-Germain, who she joined last summer. “The last few years have been unbelievable, a massive acceleration I could never have predicted, and what’s come with that is some incredible opportunities but also a lot of noise, and so I really wanted to get into a little focus zone and just totally concentrate on my development as a footballer. Careers are short and I really wanted to maximise mine. I’m trying to squeeze out every last bit of potential that I have in myself and put the blinkers on a little bit – it’s been nice to escape and just be totally all-in with trying to push myself to another level.”

The 32-year-old former Manchester United goalkeeper had played abroad before, for the German club Wolfsburg in 2018-19, but that was long before she helped England win 2022’s Euros and received Fifa’s best women’s goalkeeper award twice in a row. So far this season, as PSG’s No 1, she has started 17 of PSG’s 19 league fixtures, keeping seven league clean sheets and conceding only 12 goals, and believes moving to the French league has helped her hone her skills.

“When you’re in England, naturally people talk about the WSL, and rightly so, it’s a fantastic league, but life doesn’t stop outside the WSL. Do you know what I mean? There are fantastic teams, PSG are a top team, and I’m really enjoying playing there,” says Earps, speaking exclusively to the Guardian. “The quality of the players in the French league is very, very high. Hopefully more people will watch the French league, because I think it’s a fantastic standard of football.

“I’m really pleased I took the bold move. Of course, the start, and getting knocked out of the Champions League – it feels like a million years ago to be honest – was difficult to take but I look at it almost a year on and I’m so pleased I was brave enough to move. I feel like a better player. I’m being challenged every day. Even something as simple as, the goalkeeper coach is left-footed, so the service is different, the training is very different. Learning a new language, I think it’s improved my communication more, my positioning and decision-making.

“The league is a lot more transitional. There’s a lot of pace in the game. Playing at PSG, we have a lot of the ball, we have a lot of possession, which means we have to be really switched on to counterattacking football. The players are really, really technical, so they can punish you from very tight angles if you’re not switched on, so I think it’s added lots of little fine-tunings to my game.”

Earps says Paris has exceeded her expectations and she is “in love with the architecture”, but this week she is back in the countryside surroundings of St George’s Park, preparing for a visit to another of the cities she has lived and played in previously – Bristol – with the Lionesses hosting Belgium at Ashton Gate on Friday, in the first of a double-header of Women’s Nations League fixtures. “Oh, I love going back to Bristol!” Earps adds with a smile.

Unlike at the past two major tournament cycles, where Earps was virtually ever-present and seemingly an irreplaceable part of Sarina Wiegman’s starting XI, Earps is approaching this summer’s Euros in competition with the Chelsea shot-stopper Hannah Hampton for the Lionesses’ No 1 jersey. Wiegman admitted last week that she is still undecided on who her first-choice will be for July’s finals in Switzerland.

Earps says she is trying to use the competition for places to make herself a stronger goalkeeper, adding: “You need to have strength in depth, when you’re a top team in order to win top competitions, and we have a lot of strength in depth here, which is great. For me, it’s all about how you use it, and I’ve used the situation as a challenge. I think I’ve taken it full-on in my stride, and used it to try and better myself. That’s always what I’m trying to do. That’s why I moved to PSG, to just try to improve and develop as a player, and that’s what I feel I’ve continued to do this year. It’s a mentality thing – I’ve used it in a positive way. I’ve tried to push myself forward and I’ve been working really hard behind closed doors.”

Whoever gets the nod to start England’s Euros opener against France in Zurich – a game in which Earps hopes she can provide some expert knowledge on the opposition – everybody in the England camp is under no illusions as to the difficulty of the task awaiting the defending champions in the upcoming tournament, which looks set to be fiercely competitive.

Yet England have taken confidence from their recent win over the world champions Spain, Earps says, adding: “We know the quality that we have and it’s about making sure we’re taking the right steps and we’re preparing. The reality of it is that there’s been a lot of change, a lot of new players, we’ve had a lot of injuries, and we are navigating a new chapter. With that comes ups and downs, but we’re a team with very, very high standards and we want to be putting on really good performances. The result against Spain was a fantastic one. And hopefully we can really build on that and be consistent with that.”

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