{"id":386743,"date":"2026-01-23T20:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T20:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/386743\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T20:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T20:50:08","slug":"jess-carter-england-defender-says-euro-2025-abuse-made-her-not-want-to-leave-her-hotel-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/386743\/","title":{"rendered":"Jess Carter: England defender says Euro 2025 abuse made her not want to leave her hotel room"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carter is in the UK as Gotham are preparing to face Brazilian side SC Corinthians in the semi-finals of the inaugural Women’s Champions Cup at Brentford Stadium on 28 January.<\/p>\n

She moved from nine-time Women’s Super League champions Chelsea to the US in 2024 and has seen a big difference in how players are treated between the two nations.<\/p>\n

While the fans who support the Lionesses and travel to watch games are “amazing”, Carter said she has noticed supporters at Gotham are friendlier than in England.<\/p>\n

“In America they just seem to be so happy and so positive and tell you how great you are, even if you haven’t done that good,” she added.<\/p>\n

“My happiness comes before any form of football anymore, so whatever decision I make on where I’ll play football will be based on where I think I’ll be happiest for myself, my family.”<\/p>\n

Carter’s team-mates rallied round her during Euro 2025 and the squad made the decision to stop the anti-racism gesture of taking a knee before matches<\/a> when Carter spoke up as it was “clear we and football need to find another way to tackle racism”.<\/p>\n

With the popularity of women’s football growing, Carter said the idea that the sport is a free space for people to be who they want to be is starting to recede.<\/p>\n

“You’re starting to hesitate about who you want to be – and that’s not what we want,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We want it to be family-friendly still. We want great rivalries, but the abuse doesn’t need to come with it.<\/p>\n

“But that’s just got worse, specifically with the Lionesses.<\/p>\n

“The profiles are getting huge now. Every player should feel comfortable walking around the street and being whoever they want to be, and it’s getting to a place where a lot of people don’t feel that kind of comfort any more.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carter is in the UK as Gotham are preparing to face Brazilian side SC Corinthians in the semi-finals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-386743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}