Former England Captain Houghton Recalls Early Career Earnings of £9,000 Annually

Steph Houghton, who earned 121 caps for England and served as captain of her national team from 2014 to 2021, has spoken about her past. Steph Houghton stated, “It was never about the money when I joined Arsenal.” She added, “Now I look back at those figures and I think ‘oh my god’.” By 2012, Houghton was recognized as one of England’s top female centre-backs, receiving an annual salary of £4,000 from Arsenal, which was then the nation’s most successful women’s team. Her total income reached £9,000 annually, augmented by bonuses and additional duties as a part-time coach and club ambassador. Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast, Houghton, who earned 121 caps for England and captained her country from 2014 to 2021, remarked, “I was living in London, although I was fortunate that the club paid for the apartment.” She further explained, “At the same time, to live off that and try and save for a house, simple things we all do as human beings, it was quite tough to do.” Houghton, who concluded her playing career at the end of the previous season, is recognized for her role in transforming professional women’s football. Her autobiography, titled “Leading From The Back,” recounts the challenges she faced while advocating for improved remuneration, as a three-time Women’s Super League champion. Currently, some of the premier players in the WSL reportedly command annual salaries in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. The circumstances were notably different 12 years prior. On Friday, Houghton informed BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, “I came from the north-east. My mum and dad did not have much money and I’m from a working class family.” She continued, “I came from a pit village [South Hetton], so for me money was never really a driving factor.” She further elaborated on her motivations for joining Arsenal: “But I had the opportunity to move to Arsenal. I wanted to go there and win trophies, I wanted to establish myself in the England set-up and play with the best players.” Houghton, who joined Arsenal in 2010, developed a growing resolve to assert herself during contract re-negotiations. She recounted the difficulty of these discussions: “To be going in there by myself to speak about something was tough because the guy that I was speaking to, Vic Akers, who is an absolute legend in the women’s game, to have that conversation with someone who has brought you to the club was tough,” she added. “It was scary and it was daunting. I would have been only 22, 23 then, so quite young in terms of not that much experience,” she stated. She concluded, “But I had to stand up for myself.” Houghton subsequently achieved several distinctions, including becoming the first female player to grace the cover of Shoot magazine, being appointed an MBE, and receiving the Freedom of the City in Sunderland. Furthermore, she captained England through a notable era of expansion for women’s football, navigating heightened scrutiny, expectations, and media interest, while also mentoring emerging talent. Houghton concluded her football playing career at the close of the 2023-24 season. During Houghton’s tenure as captain, England advanced to the semi-finals of the 2015 World Cup, the 2017 European Championship, and the 2019 World Cup. However, the former player for Sunderland, Leeds, and Manchester City was excluded from Euro 2022 due to an Achilles injury that had sidelined her for several months, and was also omitted from Sarina Wiegman’s squad for the World Cup held last year. This marked a difficult conclusion to her international career with England. Rather than participating in England’s victory over Germany in the Euro 2022 final at Wembley, she viewed the match from her home television. In March, at 35 years old, she declared her intention to retire at the conclusion of the 2023-24 season. Houghton recounted, “My last conversation [with Wiegman] was when I found out I wasn’t going to be in the squad [for the 2023 World Cup].” She described the circumstances: “I was at St George’s Park, I was doing a Nike appearance. I had a missed call on my phone and it was from her. She was at St George’s and she asked ‘would you mind coming to see me?'” “I was like ‘well, OK, this wasn’t really planned’,” she recalled, adding, “By then I was done with fighting the whole situation and I just had to accept it.” She reflected, “For me, the situation could have been dealt with a little bit differently but I know I did absolutely everything and I had an unbelievable England career.” “I did struggle during the Euros because I knew how close I was to being potentially part of that squad. But that did not change the way I felt about the girls winning something that we had worked so hard to try to achieve,” she stated. She concluded, “I took myself away and went on holiday with my family and tried to process it that way. I sat at home and watched them lift the trophy.” Sarina Wiegman excluded Houghton from both the Euro 2022 and 2023 World Cup squads. In June 2018, Houghton married Stephen Darby, a former defender for Liverpool and Bradford City. Three months subsequent to their marriage, he received a diagnosis of motor neurone disease. Her autobiography reveals that she was in another country on the day Darby was diagnosed with the rare condition, which impacts the brain and nerves. She informed Woman’s Hour, “I was away in Spain playing for Manchester City.” “Being his wife and not being there for that conversation, there is a lot of guilt, a lot of anger and a lot of frustration because we had two years of tests, two years of different conversations and MND had not really been mentioned,” she expressed. She added, “To hear that over a phone call when you are away from your family, you don’t know how to react.” “There was one appointment in Sheffield where there was a slight mention of MND,” she recalled. She continued, “I