After Mary Earps retired, fans told Hampton she was not good enough and they did not want her in goal. Online bullying and hate were astronomical, but she proved them all wrong. She did her talking on the pitch, proving to them that she had every right to be given that number one shirt.
This was not the first time she had faced backlash after winning the Euros in 2022. She was reportedly dropped from the England squad due to attitude and behaviour issues and recalled in March 2023.
In that dark time where the world of football was against her and she was hurled abuse in the street, she wanted to retire; she wanted to be done with football.
She moved to Chelsea in the summer of 2023, and her career truly started. She became their first-choice goalkeeper, winning the Golden Glove this season and the domestic treble. It was not hard for Sarina Wiegman, England manager, to pick her based on her current performance compared with Mary Earps ( who later retired).
Discussing the two nail-biting penalty shootouts in this year's tournament, Hannah said: "Sometimes I say I don’t like it and sometimes I say I love it. I think the two penalty shootouts we had, I probably didn’t like it. We made it hard for ourselves, let’s be honest.
"I thought I’ve got to do my bit for the team and save a couple, but the first one against Sweden, it kept going on and on and on - we probably gave half the nation a heart attack."
She truly kept proving people wrong. She did just that after being told she would never play professional football.
Hannah Hampton prevented 2.69 goals during the Euros, the second-best in the tournament. She also made a crucial double-save before England’s late equaliser against Italy in the semi-finals.
She played every minute of the competition, winning the penalty shootout against Sweden with one working nostril.
Chloe Kelly joked to Hampton, saying, “You only need one nostril anyway.” She truly only needs one in the end.
Since then, she has saved England in two penalty shootouts against the world champions, Spain, and big contenders for the Euros in Sweden. She saved four penalties overall in the shootout, including two-time Ballon d’Or winner Aitana Bonmati.
She was named player of the match in the final against Spain.
This team is unbelievable, incredible,’ she reacted.
‘We have shown throughout this tournament we can come back when we go a goal down. We have that grit, we have English blood in us. We never say die, we keep going, and we did that today.
‘This is England. This is our moment. We have dug in for 120 minutes, we have done what we needed to do to keep Spain out. It was just one kick and we did that – it was better pens than the last one, let’s be honest!’
‘When Chloe stepped up, I turned around to the fans and I was just miming and doing a kicking motion and saying, ‘if she scores, do we win?!’
‘I completely lost track of what was going on! They were just cheering and yelling at me, and I thought, ‘I don’t know what the answer is to that!’ As soon as I saw her run up, I thought, ‘that’s it, we’ve won’.
‘I can’t believe it. It’s not going to sink in for a while.’
Though she only had one clean sheet against the Netherlands in the second group game, she played impeccably, especially with a weaker defense without the likes of Millie Bright.
After the Euros win she announced that her grandpa had died two days before the tournament started.
Her grandpa was that "extra bit of help", Hannah said: “I remember speaking to him so many times about what we wanted to achieve as a group, and how proud he was.
"All of the time he wanted to come to my football games or watch it on the TV. He would be on the phone straight after. It was hard at the beginning. The girls helped me so much to get through it, and it was hard after games when you wanted to call home and wouldn’t hear his voice.
"My whole point was to not put it out for sympathy. People don’t realise what goes on in people’s lives, so I don’t want people to keep giving all the hate comments and the abuse.”
While Ella Toone who lost her father to cancer last summer also lost her Nan the morning of the final. “Hello Nan, its Ella.”
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