Fara Williams

Fara Williams is England’s most capped footballer. She played for the Lionesses from the age of 17, winning 172 caps over the next 19 years and scored 40 goals. But even while performing at the highest level of the game, Williams was homeless, living in a hostel following a family dispute. She kept this a secret from all but the people closest to her.

In an interview this week, she looks back on that time in her life.

“People say, how did you play football for England while living in a hostel for years? But if I didn’t have football, I wouldn’t have got through that period. Living in a hostel, you see the choices some people made because they had nothing and didn’t have that focus or motivation. Football saved me.

Also inside

• New figures reveal than tens of thousands of children are among the highest number of homeless people on record
• A former prison officer reveals how crumbling prisons are leading to a failing justice system
• Exposed to dangerous heat and unable to work, we meet the street paper vendors across Europe on the frontline of the climate crisis
• We speak again to Grenfell survivor Tiago Alves, who has found a way back to the path he’d thought forever lost
• How stress-busting puppies are helping people with their money woes
• And in a special My Pitch feature, we find out what happened when Manchester mayor Andy Burnham donned a tabard to sell the magazine

Plus much more!

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