• Katie Chapman is a serial winner at Arsenal and helped the London club to a quadruple in 2006-07 season

• The legendary midfielder played 92 times for England women’s team and was part of the team that finished third in 2015 World Cup

• Chapman made her first-team debut as a 14-year-old, for Millwall Lionesses

Jayanta Oinam Katie Chapman is revered as the Steven Gerrard of the England women’s team. In October 2022, four years after her retirement, she was inducted into the Women’s Super League Hall of Fame. According to the English Football Association, the mother of three played “an integral role in central midfield of every team she played for throughout her career,” and her “honours are almost unmatched”. In a trophy-laden career, she has won everything there was to win in England. At Arsenal, she was a part of the team that completed a quadruple — winning the Premier League Cup, Women’s Cup, Women’s Premier League and UEFA Women’s Cup in the 2006-07 season. She also helped Chelsea win their first major trophy, the FA Cup in 2015. But her career was not all about trophies.

The midfield maestro, who made her first-team debut as a 14-year-old for Millwall Lionesses in 1996, played her part in women players’ fight for equality. Thanks mainly to her sacrifices, players in the Women’s Super League can now get 14 weeks of fully paid maternity leave starting the 2022-23 season. Not so long ago, this was unthinkable. In 2011, in the prime of her career, Katie Chapman was forced to abandon her England dreams as she struggled to balance family commitments with football. Unfortunately, there was very little support from the national team setup, including the FA and then head coach Hope Powell. Months after getting honoured with International Player of the Year — her second — at the 12th FA Women’s Football Awards in 2010, Chapman found herself without a contract with the national association. Chapman would reveal that in April 2011, before England’s final warm-up match against the United States in the run-up to the 2011 World Cup, she had a short conversation with Powell and the contract termination email arrived soon enough, some three hours later. Chapman, who returned from a stint with Chicago Red Stars in the United States, wanted to have a short break to sort out family matters.

As it transpired, Katie Chapman was out of the national team reckoning while Hope Powell was in charge. During that period, from April 2011 to September 2013, the former England U-18 captain watched Great Britain lose to Canada in the quarter-finals at the home Olympics. Unlike in the FIFA-sanctioned tournaments, the Olympics see England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland compete as a unified team, which now goes as ‘Team GB’. Talking about the missed opportunity, she told Bea Magazine in August of that year: “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity twice over. Playing in the Olympics, and playing them in your own country. It would have been a dream come true for me… I was quite hurt, really. I think I’m still performing at my best.” She was 30 then, and one of the finest midfielders in the world. Now, at 40, she is one of the only seven women to have been inducted into the Women’s Super League Hall of Fame, along with Fara Williams, Rachel Yankey, Emma Hayes and Kelly Smith in 2021; Karen Carney and Eni Aluko in 2022. “Does this mean I’m famous?” Katie Chapman told Skysports while speaking about the induction. “It is an honour to receive this... I’d love to be a bit younger and play a bit longer. But I don’t regret any of my career. The experiences I’ve had, I loved every minute of it.”

She, indeed, is one of the most famous footballers in the world. In a career spanning more than two decades, in which she has helped Millwall, Fulham, Charlton Athletic, Arsenal and Chelsea win trophies, Chapman has also raised the issue about pregnancy and professional sports. Hers was a career punctuated by childbirth, but she retired a true legend of the game. In 94 international matches for England, she scored eight goals and was instrumental in their runners-up finish at the 2009 UEFA Women’s Championship and a third-place finish at the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup.