How this rising Arsenal Star’s mother reinvents the role of “Momager”

Statistics are astonishing – a study in 2022 showed that 97 percent of the academy players will never play a top aircraft. If her son is the unicorn that occupies the three percent – which enters the Arsenal Academy at the age of eight and makes her first debut 10 years later – Lewis believes that we should think about children’s trips, rather than the destination. “Why are we not (telling) under -eight and -nines this is the reality? So they can only be happy in it, and when it does not happen in the end, life will not release. You have built all this resilience and trust, and you can appreciate the skills that are learned along the way.”

Lewis worked earlier in the city. When Lewis-Skelly’s prospects in football became more serious, she made a champion in football business in 2022 and received an agent license a year later to learn more. The same week he went in the Wales Bonner show, the player renewed his contract with Arsenal, much to the fans’ relief. The deal was monitored by his mother.

If they are now a formidable double act, it was not always easy to come here. “I’m not a perfect parent in any way,” she says. “I remember Myles who made his 11 plus. I took him to training, and he had an exam the next day. I got him to train the volume on a cube, and he couldn’t do it … But I’m a parent, I shouldn’t have taken him to train if I was so fushed over it.” Did he pass? “He did,” she smiles. “He entered a lovely school, which I am very proud of.”

She says that parents of girls have an even tougher time. “If you want to get your daughter into football, it’s a very middle class, white sport. It is in my opinion a lot of elite.” When it is there, the difficulties continue. The profile of women’s football has the skyrocket, but the difference remains financially – in 2023 it was estimated that the average salary in WSL was £ 47,000, compared to the average Premier League player of £ 8.2 million. While a second euro victory for Lionesses and record-breaking offers such as Arsenal’s 1 million £ signing Olivia Smith from Liverpool-Lewi’s careful. “It’s a really encouraging milestone and shows the positive direction the woman’s game is on the way,” she says of the Smith business. “That said, there is still some distance to go before the financial side is somewhere near men’s level.”