Arsenal’s Beth Mead has revealed she left a boy crying on the ground when she first started playing football and the parents laughed at her.

Sexism in football, as we know, is all too real. ‘You play like a girl’ is still seen as a valid insult despite the fact most saying it would have their arses handed to them by any one of the Arsenal women’s team and their academy.

So, it’s sadly no surprise that Beth Mead found herself the subject of ridicule when she first started playing. I wonder how many of the boys who laughed at her are now winning league titles and playing at World Cups…

“My earliest memory was playing football for a boys team called California Boys (based in Middlesbrough but the chairman lived on a street called California Road),” Mead told the Daily Mail.

“I remember hearing the opposition boys and parents laughing that I was playing. I went into a 50:50 challenge with the biggest boy on the pitch. I bounced back up and he was laid on the floor crying. I’m not saying I wanted to go out and hurt anyone but I proved I wasn’t to be messed with.”