How Mary Fowler conquered ‘envy and FOMO’ to stay in Asian Cup contention

Despite the tension, Fowler is at ease. She has had to work on that. Previously, she would have put herself and her football first, and view everything through that individualistic prism; watching her teammates kill it for club or country wouldn’t necessarily make her feel good if she wasn’t involved.

This is, after all, the same player who, in her very first media interview, at age 15, declared her intent to become the world’s best player; these days, she is much more interested in being the best version of herself.

“The past few years, I’ve been really big on trying to find a balance with work, and off-field Mary as well, and I think that’s really helped me stay grounded throughout this rehab journey,” she said.

“Being able to watch the girls from the side, it’s been really nice to see how well they’re doing, and not have any feelings of envy or FOMO. I just genuinely feel happy and proud of them for how well they’re playing. Like, I love this team so much.

“In the past, I was a lot more ambitious. Football mattered to me a lot more, and so the bubble that I lived in was very much all centred around football going well. It would have been harder for me to celebrate my teammates’ success – even though we’re all in the same team, which sounds really silly, but I think it’s very easy in a competitive environment to see your teammate as a competitor as well. So it’s been really nice in the last few years to kind of just reflect on the way I choose to show up for myself and show up for others, in particular when I’m in working environments. City has been great for that, because we have a team that’s made up of girls that are genuinely really nice people – so it makes it a lot harder to be a shitty person at work.”

Fowler is drawing particular delight from the form of City teammate Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw, one of her former adversaries in France who is arguably the top striker in the women’s game right now, on top of the WSL’s scoring charts with 14 goals.

“I played in France against Bunny, and I remember back then, you would just be standing on one side of the field, and Bunny would get the ball and dribble past three players and score,” she said.

“Your tactic was just, ‘How can you stop Bunny?’ Somehow we’ve ended up in the same team, and it’s the biggest blessing, because Bunny just gets the ball in the back of the net every game somehow. She fully deserves all the credit she’s getting now – and I think she deserves even more for how consistent she’s been before.”

It is a pointer to the immense talent in City’s squad that a returning Fowler will be a luxury add-on across the final months of the season as they inch closer to winning the league. City’s huge win over Chelsea puts them 11 points clear on top of the WSL with eight games left; this weekend, they face Arsenal, the reigning champions and newly crowned FIFA Women’s Champions Cup winners, but they are no longer any realistic hope of catching them.

After that, there are two more games in which Fowler can increase her match fitness before the Asian Cup begins. At least initially, as it was for her club on Sunday, a role off the bench for the Matildas looms for Fowler; that doesn’t bother her either.

“I’m in a team full of incredible players,” she said. “I’m not the kind of person that’s like, ‘I can’t wait to get back so I can get this spot again.’ My teammates are doing really great, and I just want to support them so that the team can do great.”

Part of why she has been able to strike the right balance during her lay-off period are the choices she’s made with how to spend her time and energy, and the endeavours she’s poured those things into, like her appearance at Paris Fashion Week and the process of writing an autobiography, Bloom.

Writing her book was an exercise in reflection and gratitude. Releasing it, however, was a different experience. Disclosing her mental health battles was a brave step that she was hoping would reach teenagers who were feeling the same things; what she didn’t expect was to hear from parents, thanking her for giving them a way to speak about those matters with their children.

There was blowback, too, from her former club Montpellier, where teammates allegedly gave Fowler and another black player bananas instead of flowers upon their departure, something she felt was not a “simple error”.

The club angrily threatened legal action in response; it has not come to pass.

“Releasing it … I was like, ‘Shit, like, people are going to read this. Have I written stuff that I want to share? Have I left myself open to people having opposing opinions? My own experience, have I recalled things properly?’” she said.

“A lot of those questions came up because it was like starting to hit me that, like, anyone can read that if they want to, but it was really nice to just reach out to people around me and be really open about how I was feeling and getting reassurance that my experiences are mine, and people are allowed to have their opinions and stuff about whatever I write, but it doesn’t change the way that I’ve experienced them and how they’ve shaped me as a person.

“Once the book actually got released and people started reading it, I was overwhelmed by the love I was getting for it … I have only good feelings about it. I was definitely anxious to have people read something that’s very personal and goes into things that I’ve never spoken about publicly, but at the same time, I love that it’s helped me to start conversations with people around me about their mental health and about their own experiences. This book has unintentionally become a platform for more conversation, and that’s been that’s been really beautiful to see.”

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