England’s golden girl: ‘Genius’ Lauren James’ journey from red card hell to Lionel Messi’s co-TV star

Between takes on a recent Pepsi advert, Lauren James is handed a challenge: hit a stack of cans from five yards away.

‘Too easy’, James replies, before she turns her back, flicks the ball up with her heel and backheels it towards the target in one, swift, mesmerising motion. She doesn’t turn to check – just waits for the clatter. David Beckham walks past and tips his hat. He knows brilliance when he sees it.

It’s been two years since James burst on to the scene at the Women’s World Cup in Australia, in a competition which she lit aflame with her hypnotic dribbling and ability to score goals that unfurl as if in slow motion.

And it’s not only Pepsi riding the James hype train. The 23-year-old has become the poster girl of this Euros, her name synonymous with the cult of the Lionesses. She’s in television adverts for deodorants, Cadbury chocolate and Walkers crisps – appearing alongside Leah Williamson, Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez. Modern day branding methods means that she’s there every time you open your phone or walk down the street. In many ways she has become a living, breathing billboard.

Dubbed a ‘genius’ by former Chelsea manager Emma Hayes, James’s World Cup story had the kind of drama that has followed a handful of England‘s most talented players. David Beckham is the obvious comparison, famously sent off for kicking out at Diego Simeone during the last 16 of the 1998 men’s World Cup.

James had her own Beckham moment in the last-16 clash with Nigeria, when, in a moment of frustration in the 86th minute with the score still 0-0, she stamped on Michelle Alozie’s back and was sent off for violent conduct. England qualified for the quarter-final on penalties and the incident earned her a two-match ban and triggered significant backlash – though not quite on the scale of the outrage Beckham faced, when an effigy of him was hung in a pub. In the wake of the incident, Alozie stepped in to calm things down, saying that she had ‘all respect’ James.

She scored twice, one a beauty, as England thrashed the Netherlands 4-0 on Wednesday

Just 21 at the time, James apologised to her teammates and vowed to learn from it. Those who know her best insist it was out of character for someone described as warm, funny and grounded, with head coach Sarina Wiegman saying she was the ‘sweetest person I know’ who was being punished for losing her emotions in a ‘split-second’.

Injuries have since disrupted her momentum – James featured in just nine Women’s Super League matches this season – but her selection for Sarina Wiegman’s Euro 2025 squad, despite not playing since April, was testament to her irreplaceable quality. And her breathtaking display against the Netherlands on Wednesday proved exactly why.

‘She’s probably the best player in this entire tournament,’ her England and Chelsea teammate Lucy Bronze eulogised after the Lionesses’ 4-0 victory, where James was involved in the opening three goals. ‘There’s a lot of special players in this tournament. I know the likes of Alexia Putellas and Aitana Bonmati, a huge amount of talented players, but LJ’s got that something special.’

To understand what shaped James into England’s generational talent and one of their biggest hopes for this summer’s Euros title defence, Mail Sport spoke to the man who knows her best: her father, Nigel James.

Growing up, football was always the lifeblood of the James family. A player himself, Nigel had enjoyed stints at Luton and Southampton before an injury in a motorbike accident ended his career at 20. After that he turned to coaching and set up Nigel James Elite Coaching at a Goals in Wimbledon on five-a-side astro pitches, which has been running for 24 years. He currently has 300 kids on the books, both boys and girls, and has helped 24 players turn professional in that time – ‘one a year’ he proudly tells me.

Nigel’s wife, Emma, works for the NHS. She had dreamed of being a paramedic but opted to become a nurse instead so that she was able to drive her kids to football practice.

All three of their children – Josh, Reece, and Lauren – were football-obsessed from the moment they could walk. Growing up in Mortlake, south-west London, Josh led the way, joining the academies at Fulham and later Reading. Two years on, Reece followed suit, progressing through Fulham and then Chelsea. Another two years behind came Lauren, who played alongside Reece in the boys’ grassroots side Epsom Eagles before being spotted by a Chelsea scout at just six years old.

And Nigel describes how his daughter’s love of football emerged from a simple thing – not wanting to be left out by her older brothers and his friends, including the likes of Atletico Madrid midfielder Conor Gallagher.

England reignited their title defence with their victory over Holland, having lost to France 2-1

James played just nine Super League matches last season but was still selected for the squad

A move to Man United kickstarted her rise before a £200,000 transfer to Chelsea in 2021

‘Her brothers were in the garden practicing, and they would have their friends over who were in the academy,’ he says. 

‘Joshua’s friends were all elite, and Reece was with the under-sevens, and he was playing with a lot of players who are in the Premier League now. Lauren was always surrounded with top players, and she was like the little sister of them all.

‘It wasn’t something that I set off, that I said to her ‘you’ve got to come and do this’. It was something that she wanted to do because she was driven by not being left out. And that’s all they knew, training and having fun.

‘Every day they played for two, three, sometimes four hours in the park, just playing with no one coaching them. I’d leave them to just crack on with it and they were developing without realising it. But the level of what they were doing was extremely high.’

Nigel coached Lauren twice a week for two hours in the cages at Goals, where she was often the only girl in the session. His focus was always on developing what he called ‘ball comfort’ – the ability to use both feet and stay composed in tight spaces.

The confined nature of the cages meant players had to wriggle free of pressure rather than rely on raw pace to get past opponents. That foundation is still clear today in Lauren’s dribbling, where the ball appears glued to her feet. Nigel also credits the physical battles with her brothers for building the strength and resilience that remain cornerstones of her game.

‘They’d do one-v-ones in the garden where Lauren was trying to beat Reece,’ Nigel says. ‘It was hard for her to turn him and to use her body strength. She’d be working on it for hours and hours, nonstop. She’d come into the house, getting annoyed, then go back out and do it again. That’s only going to develop you over the years.

‘So when it came around to going up against an average boy or a girl, she was dancing round them easily because she’d been working against power and talent for years.’

At 12, Lauren joined Arsenal’s academy and was training with the senior squad by 14. When Arsenal moved her back to the academy, her father relocated her to Manchester United, newly in the Championship under Casey Stoney. Stoney became a mother-like figure to Lauren, and at 16, she thrived, helping United earn promotion to the top-flight in her first season.

Meanwhile her ‘original mum’ Emma Hayes had been keeping tabs on her progress and speaking to Nigel regularly, and when Stoney left for America, Lauren returned to Chelsea for a WSL record transfer fee at the time.

Under the guidance of Hayes, Lauren’s trajectory continued, and she made her senior debut for England in September 2022, confirming her and Reece as the first brother and sister to represent the country since records began.

Lauren recently opened up in a deeply candid interview with She’s A Baller, reflecting on how online commentary about her body impacted both her mental and physical well-being during a challenging period in her career.

‘During my time at United there was always this phase, you know when you’ve got a young body and you’ve got puppy fat or whatever anyone calls it,’ she said. ‘I always got comments like ‘oh she’s big’.

‘During that pandemic I lost a load of weight, and it made my stress fracture even worse. And then I left United with the injury, and I joined Chelsea, and because I was so nutrient deficient, I then broke my other foot because my bones were so weak from undereating.’

Now, Lauren says she’s in a better place when it comes to managing her health – but acknowledges that the experience continues to echo in her life. ‘It’s always in the back of your head, like a little voice talking to you,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t get talked about a lot. A lot of people have it, but we don’t speak about it.’

Nigel credits Stoney and Hayes for helping her find her way, and these days Lauren’s biggest support network remain her family and, despite their 10-year age gap, Bronze, her closest friend at England and Chelsea. The two often conduct post-match interviews together, with Lauren rarely going out to do them on her own.

James has a love of fashion and regularly shares pictures on her Instagram

She takes after her older brother in more ways than simply playing for the same team

Reece is regularly at Chelsea’s Kingsmeadow Stadium supporting his sister and she takes after her older brother in more ways than simply playing for the same team, including sharing his love of fashion and of music. The Chelsea men’s captain frequently posts on his sister’s social media accounts to cheer her on from afar.

Lauren values her privacy and has spoken in the past about how she feels uncomfortable in large rooms of people, preferring her own company where she spends her time watching football on TV or playing with her dog Waffle, who has his own Instagram account.

Contrary to this, though, she has also described how there’s nowhere she feels more comfortable than in front of a packed-out football stadium. ‘I play football to get people off their seats,’ she has said.

As her statement display against the Netherlands on Wednesday night proved, when Lauren James is at her best, then England rise with her.