Change The Record is a GLAMOUR series dedicated to profiling and celebrating British sports stars. These women are flipping the narrative on what it means to be an elite female athlete, from competing on their periods to balancing training with pregnancy and motherhood, navigating body image pressures, and yes, chasing world records.
Here, we chat with Ella Toone about preparations for the Women’s Euros in Switzerland this summer, her friendship with Beth Mead and Alessia Russo, and how she’s bounced back from injury.
Eurasia Sport Images
There’s something about Ella Tooney. When she’s on the pitch, the energy changes. There’s a feeling that anything could happen. And by ‘anything’, I of course mean an absolute beauty of a goal.
She is, for example, the first England player – ever – to score in a quarter-final, semi-final, and final of a major tournament. Indeed, her efforts helped blast the Lionesses to victory in the UEFA European Women’s Championships in 2022 and a history-making second-place finish at the Women’s World Cup in 2023, ushering England into a new era of women’s football.
At club level, Ella is already fast approaching legend status at Manchester United, with her No. 7 shirt being the top-selling United Women’s jersey. After injuring her calf in training last year, Ella returned to club football with a magnificent goal during an FA Cup match against West Brom in January. This was a particularly special moment given that it was her first goal since her father, Nick, passed away in September 2024.
In conversation with GLAMOUR, Ella reflected on how her friendship with fellow England player Beth Mead [whose mother, June, passed away from ovarian cancer in 2023] has helped her cope with returning to football while grieving her father.
“After losing Dad and [finding] how hard it is to carry on playing football when you’ve just lost someone you love, to see Beth do that, go just get on with it and speak so openly about losing her mum, I think she’s a role model for me,” Ella says. “As soon as it happened, she was on the phone, and I knew that when I’m at England camps, she’ll always be there for me.”