Marc Skinner has spoken of the need for Manchester United to capitalise on Mary Earps’ brilliant achievement at the FIFA Best awards.
Earps won the 2022 best women’s goalkeeper award at Monday’s ceremony in Paris after helping the Lionesses win the Euros last summer.
“I think what it says is there is a platform here (at United) for you to go on to produce the qualities,” he began.
“You still have to do what Mary has done, which is to produce the qualities every day that make her better. But there is always an opportunity.”
As reported in The Athletic, Skinner wants the club to grow and nurture it’s own Mary Earps.
“What I think the power in it is, and I think Ian (Willcock, United’s goalkeeping coach) is going to try to capitalise on this, is that especially within England, especially within the local Manchester area, is to try to grow our own Mary Earps going forward, to promote that young players, who I’m sure she has inspired, can go on to aspire to be like Mary.”
Before coming into Sarina Wiegman’s squad in September 2021, Earps had not played for England in nearly two years.
Whilst accepting her award on Monday night Earps dedicated it to “Anyone who has ever been in a dark place” and added, “Just know that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Keep going, you can achieve anything you set your mind to.”
Skinner commented that her speech was truly beautiful whilst her England manager looked close to tears in the audience.
Skinner continued, “It’s a wonderful achievement and thoroughly deserved. You never know how these awards are going to go, you never know whether the best person actually wins the award. But in this case, she certainly did.”
Earps returned to training and showed off her award to her teammates, “She brought it in this morning, the girls gave her a huge round of applause. They’ve all been in contact throughout anyway. And I felt the speech she gave afterwards was truly beautiful.”
“We’ve got her some flowers and just made a real fuss of her, because she absolutely deserves it. Her ability to win things like that just cements the quality she has.”
Earps also had the chance to show off her award in front of over 72,000 people at Old Trafford on Wednesday alongside Casemiro.
Afterwards she met Sir Alex Ferguson who had been present at the match and presented David De Gea with an award.
Skinner’s United will face Leicester City on Sunday as the WSL returns.