Beth Mead has revealed that her aggression was cited by Hege Riise as a reason for not being selected for Team GB’s Tokyo Olympic squad – a moment that would in part fuel her ‘revenge tour’ during the 2021/22 campaign.
Mead enjoyed the season of her life during the 2021/22 campaign, scooping the Golden Boot and Player of the Tournament award as England won Euro 2022, and registering 19 WSL goal contributions as Arsenal narrowly missed out on the league title.
The forward has frequently attributed the disappointment of missing out on the Olympics as one of the motivating factors for her fine form last term, having been one of a handful of big name players not selected for Tokyo 2020, alongside Jordan Nobbs and Alex Greenwood.
However, in the summer of 2021, Mead also got the news that her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. This gave her perspective, motivation and ‘an anger at life.’
“When I had the conversation with Hege, I think the biggest thing I struggled with was she never really, for me, gave me a reason for why I shouldn’t be in that squad,” Mead told the Athletic Women’s Football Podcast, as part of a discussion about the upcoming release of her book: Lioness: My Journey to Glory.
“Yes, maybe I clearly wasn’t playing my best football considering this season just gone, but I still think I warranted being in that squad on what I’d done so far in the season. For her to turn round to me and tell me I wasn’t in the squad because of a report card, which to this day I still don’t know what that consists of or if that exists.
“And her other reason was I’m too aggressive as a footballer, and every other manager and coach that I’ve had say I play my best football when I’m aggressive and on the front foot and direct in what I’m doing so it was a tough pill to swallow. And one that I really struggled to get my head round.
“I would I think in hindsight preferred for her to turn around and say: ‘I don’t actually like you as a person. I don’t like you as a footballer’, than come up with things that were my bread and butter on a football pitch.
“So it was an interesting conversation but that was kind of one of my first and last conversations with Hege, and I haven’t had one since.”
The Arsenal forward admitted that she initially found herself ‘sulking’ somewhat during pre-season off the back of her Olympic omission, before she got the news of her mother’s diagnosis.
“It was a reality of: there’s a lot more worse things going on in the world than me not being selected to go to an Olympics and since then I’ve been very logical about someone else is always worse off,” Mead added. “At that moment when I found out, it just ignited something inside of me to appreciate life.”
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