Leah Williamson, England’s Two-Euro Captain Leading Between Injuries

Leah Williamson

Photo: Ryanasman1 / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	March 29, 1997 Milton Keynes
Occupation	Footballer
Individual awards	UEFA Women's Championship · UEFA Women's Champions League · FIFA Women's Champions Cup · FA Women's Super League · Women's Finalissima · UEFA Women's Euro Team of the Tournament · FIFA FIFPRO Women's World 11 · CBE

Most people know Leah Williamson from two photographs: the England captain holding a European trophy over her head, and then doing it again. The other half of her recent career has no photographs, because it happened in gyms and treatment rooms in north London, where she has spent a large share of the last few seasons rebuilding one part of her body after another. Her career now turns on an awkward question for a captain whose authority comes from being on the pitch: how much of that authority survives the long spells spent watching from beside it?

Sarina Wiegman has never hesitated over the answer, and neither has Arsenal, the only senior club Williamson has ever played for. Part of the reason is the way she defends. She plays centre-back with a midfielder’s habits, stepping into the space before the pass arrives and winning the ball back without having to tackle anyone. At her first major tournament as England captain, no player in the competition recovered possession more often.

Williamson grew up in Newport Pagnell, on the northern edge of Milton Keynes, the town where she was born on 29 March 1997, in a household split down the middle by football: her father and brother supported Tottenham Hotspur, while her mother and grandmother were Arsenal. Her mother had played as a girl, cutting her hair short so that she could pass for a boy and get a game. Williamson was the only girl at her first youth club, Scots Youth FC, and followed a coach to Arsenal at the age of nine. A year later she walked out as an England mascot beside the captain, Kelly Smith, who signed a photo for her and told her to dream big. At fifteen she nearly gave the game up, unconvinced that a woman could make a living from it.

She made her senior Arsenal debut the day after her 17th birthday, as a late substitute in a Champions League quarter-final in 2014, and collected an FA Cup winner’s medal that June. A year later she was the PFA Young Player of the Year. The story still told about her from that period involves a single kick. In an under-19 European qualifier against Norway in April 2015, a referee disallowed her successful penalty for encroachment and, instead of ordering a retake, gave Norway a free kick. UEFA admitted the error and took the unprecedented step of ordering the final seconds to be replayed days later. Williamson stepped up again, scored, and sent England to the finals.

For years she was a midfielder who might become a defender. Joe Montemurro settled the matter after taking over at Arsenal in December 2017, moving her to centre-back to build play from the back, and the change brought the Women’s Super League title in 2018–19. Her England career started more slowly. She made her debut in June 2018 against Russia and went to the 2019 World Cup, where Phil Neville barely used her, preferring older defenders.

Wiegman made her permanent England captain in April 2022, succeeding Steph Houghton. That summer Williamson led England to the Euro 2022 title at Wembley, the first major trophy in the history of the women’s team. She wore a rainbow armband throughout the competition, and the day after the final the squad wrote an open letter calling for guaranteed PE time for girls in schools. Williamson has said she is uncomfortable with the word activism, because, as she put it, she thinks it is simply how normal people should behave.

In April 2023, less than a fortnight after she had captained England to victory over Brazil in the Finalissima, she ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in her knee during a league match against Manchester United. She missed the World Cup in Australia, where England reached the final without her. During the rehabilitation she taught herself the piano and performed with the BBC Concert Orchestra, and she returned for Arsenal in January 2024.

The narrative that followed is usually told as a clean comeback, and it was not one. Early in the 2024–25 season her form drew heavy criticism on social media. By the end of that season she had won the Champions League with Arsenal, beating Barcelona 1–0 in Lisbon, and in July 2025 she captained England to a second straight European title, beating Spain on penalties in Basel, which made her the first England captain to lift two major trophies. The final also left her with a knee injury that needed surgery a few weeks later. The 2025–26 season that followed was mostly spent getting fit: she returned in December, withdrew from an England squad with a hamstring problem in February, came back for the Champions League semi-final against Lyon short of full fitness, watched Arsenal go out 4–3 on aggregate, and pulled out of England duty with another hamstring injury in June. Her nomination for the Laureus Comeback of the Year award, for the ACL recovery, arrived in the middle of that season, when she was again spending more time in rehabilitation than on the pitch.

Arsenal’s answer was a new contract in April 2026, reported by the BBC as a two-year deal. She was made a CBE in the 2026 New Year Honours, having been appointed OBE three years earlier. The new season has already produced an awkward moment: at Paris FC in the Champions League at the end of September 2026, she picked up a ball after a goal kick believing it was not yet in play, the referee awarded a penalty, and Arsenal’s two-goal lead became a 2–2 draw.

With England she has been back in charge. After finishing second to Spain in their qualifying group, the Lionesses had to go through the play-offs for the 2027 World Cup in Brazil, and in October they beat Greece 3–1 in Crete and 5–0 in Leicester, with Williamson leading the side out as captain at the King Power Stadium.

Away from the pitch she has spoken publicly about living with endometriosis, which once made her anxious about playing during her period, in the hope of getting better support for players with the condition. She is in a relationship with the American model and former Miss USA Elle Smith, and she is a close friend of Keira Walsh, with whom she came through every junior England team. In 2023 she published You Have the Power, written with the journalist Suzanne Wrack, and the children’s novel The Wonder Team and the Forgotten Footballers with her cousin Jordan Glover.

The next test is the second round of the World Cup play-offs, against the winner of Slovakia and Ukraine. If England get through, Williamson will have the chance to captain a team at a World Cup for the first time, after watching the last one from home.

Tags: sports, athletes, footballers, Arsenal Women, Leah Williamson, Sarina Wiegman