{"id":641025,"date":"2026-04-30T17:45:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T17:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/641025\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T17:45:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T17:45:11","slug":"millie-bright-former-england-and-chelsea-captain-on-abuse-retirement-and-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/641025\/","title":{"rendered":"Millie Bright: Former England and Chelsea captain on abuse, retirement and the future"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Millie Bright announced her retirement on Wednesday, her mum gave her a letter.<\/p>\n

But as Bright continues to wrestle with the emotions of her big announcement,<\/a> she says she has been unable to read it all.<\/p>\n

The 32-year-old retired from England duty last year and has now left Chelsea after 294 appearances, eight Women’s Super League titles, six FA Cups and four League Cups. <\/p>\n

A Euros winner in 2022, she has returned home to her family’s farm in Sheffield and is celebrating her dad’s 60th birthday – the sort of event she would have previously missed while juggling playing and training.<\/p>\n

Surrounded by her family and beloved horses, Bright says she is “at peace” with the decision to retire after what she describes as the most challenging two years of her life. <\/p>\n

“Both physically and mentally, I have been ready to say goodbye,” Bright tells BBC Sport.<\/p>\n

“The mental side of things for me, personally… life’s been very difficult, and the amount of abuse I have dealt with has been too much to handle.<\/p>\n

“I think over the past year I have lost myself as a person, and it has taken me a long time to rebuild myself.”<\/p>\n

Bright withdrew from England’s Euros squad<\/a> in 2025, as she felt she was unable to give 100% mentally and physically, and says that announcement led to her receiving a significant amount of abuse.<\/p>\n

“It was difficult because I was trying to do the right thing for me and the team. I didn’t expect the abuse,” she says.<\/p>\n

“I expected people to be like: ‘Why are you making this decision?’ I can tolerate that, but to question my integrity, my passion and dedication as a player… I can’t ever accept that.<\/p>\n

“We are still humans, we have a life outside of football and I think that is forgotten 99% of the time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Millie Bright announced her retirement on Wednesday, her mum gave her a letter. But as Bright continues…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-641025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}