A former county champion in badminton who also played cricket in the Worcestershire county schools team, Missy Goodwin always seemed destined for a sporting career, one way or another, it was just a question of in which sport.
After her latest inclusion in the England Under-23s squad that will face Germany and France this month, she is certainly glad she chose football. After her winning goal for Leicester against Liverpool in the Women’s Super League, her club unquestionably are too.
It was almost never her path, though, even before the days when she was competing in everything from cross-country to netball for St Augustine’s Catholic high school in Redditch. “At the time I wasn’t really that bothered about football but I just wanted to go because my friends were doing it and I didn’t want to be left out,” she recalls. “Then my best friend at the time was going to Birmingham City for trials and ever since that, I’ve loved it.”
Goodwin signed for Birmingham when she was eight and spent a decade on the club’s books, before moving to Aston Villa in 2021 and then making her biggest switch of all, joining Leicester in January 2022. The 5ft 4in forward admits it took time to thrive in senior football but now, in her third full season at Leicester, she is clearly having her best campaign yet, under Amandine Miquel.
“I was just like a skinny little girl and when you play women’s football it’s very different to academy football so the step between the two, I found that hard at the start, but credit to the coaches, the [strength and conditioning] coaches, and all the staff here, they’ve really helped me to bridge that gap,” she says at their Belvoir Drive training base.
“One of the reasons that I’ve found a bit of form recently is definitely because of Amandine. She allows young players like me to play with no fear and take the risk, and if you make a mistake it’s: ‘OK, get the ball back.’ I may have been playing with a bit of an ‘oh, don’t do that’ feeling, but she’s really taken the weight off my shoulders and allowed me to play freely. She really encourages people to go one‑v‑one. Personally I feel like I’m a one‑v‑one player and she’s helped me with confidence.”
Goodwin’s family still live in the Redditch area and her brother, Ethan, coaches in women’s football and is on the staff at third-tier Stourbridge. Her parents travel to watch her games. The 22-year-old, who has been part of the England youth setup since she was in her early teens, was never originally a wide player, usually found “as a No 8 or a 10” before an England coach suggested shifting her to the wings and now this season she has added important goals to her game, too.
Her goal against Chelsea in December, which earned Leicester a point, remains the only time so far that Chelsea have been prevented from winning a game under Sonia Bompastor, and Goodwin has since backed it up with a goal in the FA Cup against Stoke City before another to clinch January’s 2-1 win over Liverpool.
In a goal-shy team, her two league goals in 12 appearances this season make her not only Leicester’s top scorer in the WSL this term but also the contributor of a third of their six league goals. Everybody at the club knows those numbers need to rise. “It’s always something I’ve wanted to add into my game,” Goodwin says.
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“It’s been hard, but I think this season we’ve struggled with [scoring goals] again. We’ve been very good defensively but going forward we haven’t scored that many goals, so it’s nice to have a few [goals lately] and take the confidence from that. Hopefully then, as a whole team we can score more goals.”
Despite some positive results of late, Leicester are just one place and three points above the relegation zone before Sunday’s visit of Goodwin’s former club Aston Villa, who sit just one point above Leicester.
“It’s very tight, but I think one win can change a lot of things, so it’s even more motivating to know that even a couple of wins can really, really help,” says Goodwin. “Leicester is a positive environment to be in. Amandine set it straight that any game is winnable. The mood going into every game is really positive and that’s quite refreshing. Because of the performances we’ve produced, sometimes we have been a bit unlucky, so the performances are allowing us to be motivated to then hopefully get the points.”
Source: theguardian.com
