Hell

Am I going to die?

That’s the first thing I remember thinking when they told me I’d had a stroke.

I associated a stroke with people losing body function, or losing their speech, their memory ... their life.

I thought, Have I changed? If I do somehow survive this, am I going to still be me?

At 24 years old, you’re not equipped to deal with the word stroke. You’re young. You’re thriving. You’re indestructible.

Until you’re not.

It all started on Christmas Eve, in 2023. My boyfriend and I went on vacation, had a nice dinner. Then when we woke up, suddenly we were both really ill. We thought we had food poisoning. We went home, and he got better pretty quickly, but for some reason, my nausea lingered. 

That didn’t stop my training, though. At the time, I had been in the habit of really overdoing it because of things I was going through at the club. I was so far into this cycle, I didn’t know a way out.

For months, I had been out of the squad at Manchester City. There was all this noise surrounding it. Everyone had questions. And I never said anything. I was professional through it all. 

But there comes a point when things are more important than football.

And now, I want to tell my story, for anyone who might be going through something similar.

After that period of illness over Christmas, my stress level was extremely high. There were a lot of reasons for that, but mainly, I was in the process of looking for a new club, which was something I never thought I’d have to consider. When Barcelona showed interest, it was the dream move, and I desperately wanted it. Recently losing my England place just reaffirmed to me that I needed to be back playing. But weeks went by, and still I wasn’t getting any better. I told the team doctors what was going on, and eventually, they got me an MRI.

At the scanning centre, they put a plastic cage around my head before I went head first into the machine. It was so claustrophobic. I’ll never forget the noise ... That awful clicking and banging and whirring, for over an hour. And I was just lying on my back. Alone in the room. I was so, so scared.

Then I got the results the next day. I’d just dropped my boyfriend off at the MIP, which is close to City’s training facility, when the doctor called. 

He said, “You need to come in now. Are you driving?”

I rushed to the physio room, by myself. The doctor had me sit down.

He said, “We can’t believe it. But it looks like you’ve had an infarct in your left occipital lobe.”

What the fuck?

I didn’t have a clue what that meant. 

“Ellie, you’ve had a stroke.”

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“The club wants to sign you.”

I’ll never forget hearing them words.

I was at Sheffield United until I was 15. And then Manchester City came calling.

City was something I could never say no to. It was 2015. The England girls had just come back from playing the World Cup in Canada, and seven of them were at City. I remember staying up late at night to watch their games, because of the time difference, then going into the facility to do a tour. It was all new at this point, and you had the whole training complex, where the men were on one side, the women on the other. You’re getting introduced to all these players, and it’s a no-brainer really. You’re just gobsmacked. It was like a dream. 

So I signed, and I was actually still in my last year of secondary school, so on Wednesdays I got day-release, and I went and trained with the first team. When I finished school, it was difficult because all my friends were going off to uni, and I was doing my own thing. So that dynamic changed forever. But the hardest part was leaving my parents’ house, because that was all I’d known.

When I was a kid, I’d come home from school and be out on the street playing football ’til tea. My street used to have these wild garden parties, where all the kids would be playing and causing havoc, and the parents would be singing Motown on the karaoke machine. That’s Sheffield — the steel city. It’s heavily working-class with really solid, grounded people. I’d never want to lose them roots.

This one time my dad accidentally put petrol in our diesel car, and we had to get towed home. And I’ll never forget, when we turned onto our street, it was lined with people. Somehow, word got out, and my neighbours were having a big party to “welcome” us and embarrass my dad a little bit. It was so funny. Every year, there was the Christmas light competition — who could string the most lights on their house. My dad absolutely hates heights, so I was the little kid crying because my house had like one string of twinkle lights strung across the garage. But I loved how into it everybody got and how close everyone was.

Sometimes I find myself craving those moments. I look back, and I think, Those were such good times.… What happened???

When I joined City, it was like I’d walked into this dressing room with superstars. 

There was Steph Houghton and Lucy Bronze. Toni Duggan and Jill Scott. Big personalities. Not that they weren’t welcoming, they were. But in the moment, it feels like they’ve got their shit together, and you’re just the kid.

I remember my first day training, I called my dad, and I was like, “There’s no way I can do it. They’re shooting past me. I’ve not even seen the ball, it’s just ridiculous. These are grown women, and I’m a kid, and I don’t know what’s happening!”

Chris Williams, the goalkeeper coach, was just great. He’s been beside me since the day I signed, at 15. He mentored me and showed me the ropes. 

Training professionally was just so completely new to me. As strange as it might sound, I’d never really had to train so hard before. I’d always been the kid that was like the best in the academy, so I’d never worked properly. I quickly started to realise that if this is what I wanted to do, I had to learn how to keep up. I had to earn my contract.

That’s when the pressure started.

There are rules about how your body composition should be. Trainers will tell you, “You need to be at this number.” When numbers are involved, it’s never good. It’s not healthy labeling your weight as “performance.” But that was the culture in football. That was where a lot of my body image issues began.

It starts small. 

First, you think, OK, I need to make weight, so I’ll just stop eating carbs. Then you start training more. But you’re not thinking about overtraining. You’re thinking, I gotta get down to this number. And maybe you’re actually performing well, which is like confirmation that this must be the right thing to do. So, you restrict even more. You’re lured into the sense that this is the only way to succeed. I started training outside of the football schedule, doing extras, and definitely not eating properly. But in my head, I could justify it. I thought, I’m playing quite well. It’s working. 

In 2020, when the Olympics got pushed back, I felt like that was my shot. So, I trained even harder. Then I went, in 2021, and got to play. That was my first major tournament, one of the coolest experiences ever.

After the Olympics, I came back to City. The first days of preseason, I felt really good. Then at training, I jumped for a routine cross, and my calf just went. Gone. Numb. I knew it wasn’t good.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but my body was starting to break down.

Everyone I saw around me was so physically strong, and I wanted to be just like them. The thing is, I don’t think I really have the body type to develop that way. I should have just played to my strengths. But I tried to change and mold myself into something I wasn’t.

I was supposed to be out for six weeks. But six weeks turned into seven months. I just couldn’t get my calf right, and something just felt off. I tried to push on.

Meanwhile, I was training so hard, I stopped getting my period. I thought, It’ll come back when I’m finished playing. In all honesty, I’d spoken with a gynaecologist who’d told me just that, as if it were normal. That’s a narrative I think needs changing. It’s not cool to not have a period, and it’s certainly not a sign of health, no matter how low your body fat is. But I kept going. The team doctor would call me into his office to discuss my blood tests and suggest eating more, but I would argue, “I am eating enough.” Every time I had a good performance, it was almost like a big middle finger to everyone that told me I needed to slow down. It was like, Fuck you. I’m playing well. My body fat’s low, great. But it wasn’t.

After the calf injury, I was named to the 2022 Euros team. 

Even though I didn’t play, it was an amazing journey. There’s one little part of it I’ll never forget. We had just beaten Spain and were going into the semifinal, and we were all playing volleyball in the gardens of the Lensbury Hotel, like a bunch of kids. There was all this noise and this expectation … talk of “changing the game” … The crowds were building … We just sold out Brighton Stadium … And we were all just playing volleyball, messing around. And that’s the way it was, the whole way through. No matter what was going on outside, the bubble we had was unbreakable. We just had this amazing friendship between us.

To win the Euros at home in England was incredible. It was historic. But the journey — the way it felt being with those women — that showed me what football could be. What it should be.

But football doesn’t wait for anyone. I went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows in just a few months. 

From the beginning, the manager at City was always so great with me, in a way that really boosted my confidence. At some point in 2023, though, something changed. I don’t know what happened.

You know how sometimes, you just feel the vibe shift with someone? That’s what it was like. Suddenly, it felt like I couldn’t do anything right, like every game became tough. I’ve always been so open to improving and open to criticism, but my self-confidence went into free fall. This went on most of the season, until my confidence finally hit rock bottom. I was playing like crap. 

Then we played the Manchester derby. 

I’m not usually a hesitant goalkeeper. I’ve always been front-footed and aggressive. That’s my game. I remember right before halftime the ball came over the top, and I hesitated. That’s when I knew, Shit. There’s no going back. I ended up cleaning Keets out, who is my good friend. 

And I knew straight away….

Red card.

I’ve never been sent off in my life. Devastated doesn’t begin to cover it. I went into the dressing room. I was just so gutted and angry. Something in me just burst. It was like the dam just broke. All the emotions that had been building all year came pouring out. There weren’t any more games after my suspension, so my season was done.

But Sarina kept faith in me. She took me to the 2023 World Cup in Australia, even off the back of a pretty poor season at City. That meant the world to me. That was like a pocket of air. 

That team is such an amazing team to be in. I trained really well over that period, working with the goalkeeper coach there. And slowly but surely, I started to feel like me again. Even though I didn’t play under Sarina as much as I’d hoped, she was always so honest. Like, “This is why you’re not playing. This is what you need to do. This is my preference.” That’s what I was really missing at my club. I can sit with that feedback and say, “OK, great. I’ll work on this, and I’ll give it everything.”

That summer was like my chance to reset. I wanted to put that horrible season behind me. And I felt like there was a real shift in me in that tournament. I felt myself again. 

When I returned, I had that fight back in me. I was ready to play.

The first day of preseason at City, I knew I had to re-earn my place at the No. 1. 

I thought, OK, I’m ready. Let’s do this.

Well, the first game, against West Ham, I was on the bench. We had Chelsea the next week, and I wasn’t even in the squad. That continued game after game. I’d warm up with the team, shower, and sit with the fans. Like, You’re making me travel to Arsenal away, to Leicester away, to sit in the stands. Why? That was probably the hardest part.

Football was my life. I’m not the type of person that can turn that off. I started doing anything I could to distract myself. I took up yoga. I exercised to the point of exhaustion. But truthfully, I just felt awful. It was hell.

I want to make something clear: I understand the demands of the game. It’s bigger than any one player. Sometimes difficult decisions have to be made for the success of the team. But it got to a point where it wasn’t about playing or not playing. It became about dignity and respect. I’m a human being — we all are. There are proper ways of treating people, and during that period, I don’t think it was managed well. I was iced out. Communication was nonexistent when I needed it the most. I just hope nobody else ever has to feel the way I felt that year.

I closed myself off from my family. I didn’t know where to turn, or what to do.

Then, in December, my agent told me there was interest from Barça. And that was such a huge relief. But it was also stressful because at that point, you want it done immediately. It was like, Will it happen in January? Will it happen in the summer?

Then Christmas came.

Like I said, I felt ill, and it kept getting worse. But I still went back to training on January 2, knowing something wasn’t right. After about a week, I knew it wasn’t food poisoning. But I needed to train because I wanted to sign with Barça. I didn’t want anything to go wrong.

In late January, we traveled down to Spurs, and I remember we were training in the evening, and my eyes couldn’t adjust. I couldn’t see properly, even five feet away. It was so strange. I thought it might just be the darkness or something. But I felt like I was going to fall over, and I kept feeling super sick. That night, I told the team doctor what was going on. I remember getting in my car to drive home, and calling my mom. My parents were in Sheffield, about three hours away, and I said, “You need to come stay with me.” I was working myself into a state. I was like, “Something is very, very wrong.”

The team doctors thought I had a concussion from a ball that hit me in the back of the head at training, a few weeks prior. But I’d had a concussion before, and I knew it wasn’t that.

I told them they needed to get me a head scan.

To their credit, they sorted it straight away.

After that, everything happened so fast that I couldn’t even really process it. One minute they’re calling me into the office to tell me the results, the next minute I was put in a car to go to the hospital for a second scan.

I’ll never forget the fear I had going back into that narrow tube, as I was still trying to make the doctor’s words make sense….

A stroke? I’m 24. What???

Inside the MRI machine, all these visions from my life played in my head. Happy memories of being that young kid, playing football with all the lads in the garden. How raw and beautiful that felt. 

But I also had this terrifying realisation: I felt like I’d wasted my one life.

I thought about all the hours I’d wasted in the gym, all the time that I’d put into my career. All that stress I put myself under.… And for what? 

At that moment, I didn’t care about football anymore. I was literally thinking, Fuck football. If I never play again, that is what it is. I need to live. 

I thought to myself, No matter what, Ellie, you have to survive this moment.

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And thankfully, I did. But the recovery wasn’t linear, honestly. It was like walking into the unknown.... As far as I know, no player has ever come back from a stroke before. The restrictions felt endless.

The biggest barrier of all was my mind. To anybody who dismisses the symptoms of anxiety, trust me, they are very much real and physical. After I found out I’d had a stroke, even simple balance and head movements terrified me. I would turn my whole body left and right just to look around. I felt like a ticking time bomb ready to explode any second.

Not knowing what caused it was the hardest.

In young people, the most common causes of stroke are either a patent foreman ovale (PFO) or a dissection in the neck. A PFO is a hole in the heart that can allow a blood clot to travel to the brain. A dissection is when an artery tears in the neck, and the blood supply to part of your brain is cut off. Both are life-threatening.

In my case, they think it was a PFO, because they were able to identify signs of a hole that seems to have healed itself and formed a membrane. But they couldn’t prove that anything, like a blood clot, had ever gone through it. An unthinkable amount of tests, appointments, and dyes injected into my body, all to find nothing. It didn’t sit right with me. I nearly drove myself crazy with questions. Did I have a dissection? Do I have a hole in my heart? The list goes on. 

For a while, it was like I was going insane. I had more sleepless nights than I could count. My parents were looking after me in shifts. Just imagine being 24 years old, having left home at 15 … and now I couldn’t be alone for five minutes. 

This is the part of recovery that nobody sees … The drain on my family, my relationship.

I owe them the world.

There’s still a bit of a question mark around what caused my stroke, and I guess there always will be. But I’m reassured by the full-body MOT I had, which came back healthy, and the support I’ve received from my doctors. It’s all been really comforting. As crazy as it might sound, I’m lucky. In terms of where my stroke hit, I should be blind. My vision was funny for a period, but now I have no lasting effects, physically.

But mentally? That’s another story. 

It’s not all rainbows. There’s not a day goes by where I don’t wake up thinking about that period of my life. Every day I grieve what I once was. Every sensation in my body is heightened now, and the anxiety is still there, deep within me. I know that’s OK, and I have to be patient with myself. But I miss the feeling of invincibility. I ask myself, What if? Maybe if I hadn’t got caught in the vicious cycle of body image and overtraining and caring maybe too much about achievements, I would be like everyone else. I hope one day that mental burden will pass, but I honestly don’t know. 

Basically, I’m left with mental scars, and I want to be honest about that. That’s something I want to normalise for anybody going through a similar thing.

I have to thank the medical team at Manchester City, for trusting me when I said something was wrong and helping me get an MRI. They really stuck with me, especially Dr. Sam. Every worry, every doubt, I could really count on them. They gave me the belief that returning was possible. 

For the first three months, I was terrified. Imagine getting told you’ve had a stroke in your brain, and then having to throw yourself in the air and dive at people’s feet. But eventually, your body’s instincts kick in, and you get it all back.

I went into Barça thinking about all of the big names there. The history. And I’ve never been so shocked in my life about how incredible and friendly everybody is. Everyone boosts each other, even with that competitive edge we all have. Even though I was still rebuilding my body last season and wasn’t as fit as I would have hoped, it was a great step for me going to Barcelona. 

Now, I’m excited to start my new chapter at Aston Villa.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the camaraderie I felt at the Euros, and the commitment we made back then to change the women’s game. 

People are investing more than ever, but there needs to be care, too. You have to create that environment where the player feels valued, as a human being. I think that’s where the women’s game has to get to. Maybe the men’s game, too. We’re human, and we should always be treated that way.

Last December, I made my debut at Barça. My first game of football since the red card against United in April of 2023….

Eighteen months without football.

That time taught me a lot about myself. I’m not Ellie the obsessive trainer anymore. And I value life a lot more. I’m not in the gym when I should be out for dinner with my family.

Looking back on everything, the pressure I put on myself is my biggest regret. It got me nowhere. The medals, the achievements, I don’t know if I ever even enjoyed achieving them, because I was always looking for the next thing.

After my stroke, I made a promise to myself that, moving forward, I will enjoy every win, every moment on the training pitch. Every meal with my family. Every walk with my dog. No matter how hard it gets.

The fear of what happened will never leave me, and I accept that. But I’m working on finding a way to make my struggle my superpower. Every great career has a comeback. Now it’s time for mine. I’ve never felt more rounded as a human, ready for any challenge I face.

I’ve got this burning love for the game again. Every training session feels like a gift, even when I’m not perfect, because I know what truly matters. I have a point to prove, but this time it’s not for anyone else but me.

I’m alive.

I’m healthy.

I’m here.

—Ellie