Leah Williamson

“Even if someone else might not have liked the way I looked, to me I was fit, I was healthy, and I looked a way that I was happy with because I knew what I was doing made me happy.”

“My dad always said to me that he hoped there would be a wage, so that I could be a footballer as a job. The game has blown up. The opportunities that now come with it, obviously we benefit from them, but it's never been what I thought I was going to grow up into - the complete landscape has changed.”

“I don't want people to perceive me in the wrong way but I am thick-skinned enough to know I am taking care of my football and my performance.”

“I was at the petrol station with my mum in the car. She went to pay for fuel and this guy taps on the window and I was like, either he's telling me off for being on my phone or he recognised me and people wait outside toilets to see you.”

“If you are being different, it means you are focused on doing what you want to do and what makes you happy rather than what other people want you to do.”

“I am exceptionally patriotic - I've been brought up that way - so I love representing my country and somehow, I've just managed to convince other people I'm alright at football along the way!”

“I don't care if everybody's going in heels and I want to turn up in loafers. It doesn't bother me what the crowd is wearing.”

“Winning a trophy is my job, is it not? I am a footballer.”

“I have a team with a same-sex couple in it. How can I be in support of something that wishes for them to stay away or not be who they are?”

“Most women's footballers my age will have a qualification of some description just because we have to, in case anything goes wrong.”

“I've got loads of inspirational people I've always looked up to, really strong women, who don't necessarily play football. I didn't want to be them, and I didn't want to do what they did. But they still inspired me to be me.”

“Once Nike partnered with the England football team, there was a massive drive in the women's game. When I found out they wanted to work with me, I absolutely jumped at the chance.”

“Not only do we face the stereotype from these sort of archaic beliefs that women are only meant to be a certain way... But we are also conditioned to believe them.”

“I know I am a role model and I do care how I come across.”

“I've always been very opinionated. But I was dismissed as being angry.”

“Having an endometriosis flare up is a big fear when you get to a tournament not injured.”

“I think there's a consideration with lots of things where if you listen well enough and you speak to people then most of the time you will form your own view and your own opinion, and if you are brave enough to say it out loud then you will help people.”

“Protect and facilitate a future, a safe future, for women and young girls to be whoever they want to be. And if they want to use sport to do that, then they need an environment that welcomes them and is safe for them to do that.”

“I'm studying accounting to secure my future.”

“The song I've heard too much in my life is Ed Sheeran's 'Shape Of You.' It's a masterpiece.”