“She’s had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra,” quips Keith Marley about his wife Mo, the former Everton and England captain who was renowned as a coach for her development of talented young players for club and country.
And though Keith – who himself managed the Toffees for four seasons around the turn of the century – makes a joke of it, Mo admits: “I think I retired quite a few times; I got quite attached to it.
“The first time was when I was 16 and playing for Connah’s Quay in the Liverpool & Wirral League. At the same time I was taking my ‘O’ level exams though, so I stopped playing.
“I went back and had a spell with Runcorn Ladies, but eventually I stopped playing again. But then in 1988 I went to watch Leasowe Pacific (who seven years later were to have a name-change to Everton) play against Doncaster Belles in the FA Cup final and I thought to myself, ‘Yeah, I think I can do that.’”
She could indeed do that – Leasowe lost that final but, 12 months later and now with Marley an integral part of their defence, they beat Friends of Fulham 3-2 in a memorable FA Cup final played at Manchester United’s Old Trafford.
And although she was to have more ‘retirements’ during her long playing and coaching career, Marley became fully committed to football once she had started playing in the FA Women’s Premier League.
Though she started her playing career as a striker it was as a clever, solid and always reliable central defender with great on-field organisational skills that Marley built her reputation.
“I was skinny and quick as a centre forward,” says Marley looking back on her playing days, “but I wasn’t a natural goal scorer. I never had that thrill of scoring goals, I got more pleasure saving one off the line.
“So I guess I was destined to be a defender. I wasn’t a flair player, I knew my limitations. But my work rate never altered for club or country.”
Under Marley’s captaincy Everton won the Premier League in 1997-98 and then – under her management following her 2002 retirement as a player – they finished runners-up in five successive seasons ahead of the 2011 start of the Women’s Super League.
“We were really strong in that 97-98 season with internationals like Becky Easton, Karen Burke and Louise Thomas in the squad,” says Marley.
“We’d been taken under the wing of Everton (men’s club) a couple of years earlier and we were getting more of a professional approach as a women’s team, like bringing in qualified coaches to help improve skill levels.
“We became more stable as a club, and winning the League helped in that sense as well as being a massive achievement.”
By this time Marley was finding it increasingly difficult to fit in her football commitments while working full-time for an accountancy firm.
That situation was exacerbated once she became a regular in the England team following her 1995 debut – which itself had avoided another retirement.
“Keith and me were getting married in the October,” says Marley, “and thinking about possibly having kids, and I was going to retire from football – again!
“But in the September I was called up for an England training camp. I was made up, but I thought, ‘how is this happening? I’m 28!’
Retirement from playing this time stalled, Marley says: “It became tricky getting time off to play for England – so this time I retired from full-time work.”
Now full-time in football, Marley nevertheless remained an amateur player and coach with Everton until leaving the club in 2012.
She took over as coach in 2002, her first season not going to plan but that was followed by some fine achievements including FA Cup and Premier League Cup triumphs and a couple of League Cup runners-up finishes.
“We nearly got relegated in my first year in charge,” she recalled. “I’d just got my ‘A’ licence and it was the year when we brought in a lot of younger players.
“I was playing with them, coaching them at the same time, it was tough. I think we had to win our last game of the season to stay up, that's how close it was.
“But we were in a massive transitional period at that time. We built from there and became a really good team with some outstanding players like Farah Williams, Rachel Unitt, Rachel Brown.
“The one thing we didn’t win was the League and that was obviously a disappointment, especially in the season (2008-09) where we lost out on goal difference to Arsenal.
“That was really hard to take. We’d beaten them 3-1 away, and then in the last game of the season at home to them we only needed a draw but lost 1-0.
"I think the pressure got to us that day. The psychology of only needing a draw didn't help us, but I think also that we lacked the experience to handle the pressure. It was one of my biggest disappointments.”
Big disappointment though that was, Marley had built a fine Everton team and her coaching acumen became recognised both locally as she became the Liverpool County FA’s Women’s and Girls Football Development Officer, and on a much wider scale as she was drafted into the England coaching set-up by the then national Head Coach, Hope Powell.
Under Marley’s guidance as she headed up the England youth system, the national senior team benefitted hugely with a continuous flow of gifted youngsters coming through the talent pathway to star in World Cup and European Championship campaigns right through to the 2020’s.
She retired – again – in 2020, but returned in 2021 to set up an England Under-23 team and then finally, after a stint with the Under-17’s, closed the curtain on her distinguished career in 2023.
“I had a such great time in football,” she reminisces, “from when I was a young kid being taken to play by my sisters to playing and coaching at the highest levels. I was privileged to play with some of the best players in the country and to work with some brilliant coaches in the England set-up.
“And I was fortunate to see the huge growth in the women’s game. When I started there were hardly any opportunities for girls to play and the game was strictly amateur. But by the time I retired it was far more accessible and highly popular, and with the chance for women to play professionally.”
BECKY BACKS MO
The former Everton, Doncaster Belles, Liverpool and England midfielder Becky Easton was among the many admirers of Marley both as a player and manager.
“Mo was brilliant, one of the best centre-halves I ever played with,” remembers the tough-tackling Easton, who played alongside Marley at both club and international levels.
And when Marley stepped up from playing for to managing the Toffees, Easton was not surprised. “Mo had always contributed massively to the team,” says Easton. “She was captain anyway and she was a bit of a boss on the pitch.
“It felt like she was player-coach when you were playing alongside her, so it wasn't a big change for me to see her go from team mate to manager – and a very good one too. I always had loads of respect for her.”
After winning the 1989 FA Women’s Cup final, Leasowe were invited to a 12-team international tournament in Sardinia.
Marley recalls: “We were the so-called best team in England after winning the FA Cup and we were called ‘England’ in the tournament. But we were a club team attached to a pub, The Leasowe in Birkenhead, and there were international teams from Russia, America, Poland and others.
“It was organised by AC Milan and it was an amazing experience. We played some of the games on a sort of shale surface, but then we got to play the USA on grass and we thought, “yes, this will be much better for us” – but we got hammered 10-1!
The American team, who won the tournament and two years later would win the inaugural Fifa Women’s World Cup, had little sympathy for the ‘pub team.’
Striker Carin Jennings said: “We should have stopped before the score got that bad. But on the way to the stadium, they were singing on their bus that they were going to kill us. So we thought, ‘Why not? We’ll kill them.’ ”
LEAGUE CUP UPS AND DOWNS
Everton competed in four FA Women’s Premier League Cup finals but won only one of them, beating Arsenal 1-0 in 2008 to wreak revenge for a 3-1 defeat by the same opposition in the 1998-99 campaign.
Marley had collected runners-up medals as a player in the finals against both the Gunners and, two years previously, Millwall Lionesses. So it was a joyous occasion as the team she now managed at last lifted the trophy.
“That was a great day for us,” she says. “In the run-up to the final we’d adapted our physical training programme in preparation for that particular game. And on the day we were brilliant – so sharp throughout the 90 minutes.
“When you see hard work in training come to fruition on the pitch it's just so rewarding. It was a tough programme we gave the players, but you've got to put the mileage in to get your outcomes and that one was perfect.”
Nowhere near perfect was the outcome of the last Premier League Cup final Everton played in, going down 2-0 to Leeds Carnegie in 2010 on a virtually frozen pitch at Rochdale’s Spotland Stadium.
Marley says: “That game should never have been played. The pitch was frozen and the girls were falling over in the warm-up. It was too dangerous.
“Fair play to Leeds, they handled the situation way better than our girls did. But I don’t care what anybody says, the game should never have been played.”
“Winning the Euros with the 19’s in 2009 was very, very special,” says Marley. “When I took charge of the seniors on a short term basis it felt natural because I knew most of the players, I’d worked with a lot of them at different age levels.
“And I think it just confirmed where my place was – I think I was more of a player-developer than a senior England team manager. But I enjoyed it and I'm grateful I got the opportunity.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Images from Mo & Keith Marley, kipax.com, Julian Barker, Chris Brunskill - The FA/The FA via Getty Images and Tony Marshall - The FA/The FA via Getty Images.
