Lioness girlfriend’s a keeper: a German one
Penalties, anyone? Jess Carter, England defender, may face her partner Annkatrin Berger in Euro final
‘We can be who we are in the women’s game. It’s going to take a while for that to be the case in men’s football’
ENGLAND and Germany may be bitter footballing rivals, but two players who found romance across enemy lines will face off in the Euro 2022 women’s final.
Defender Jess Carter and her off-field partner Ann-katrin Berger, a goalkeeper, will record a footballing first by featuring in opposing squads for a final.
The pair are a long-term couple who first grew close while team-mates at Birmingham City and are now together again at top Women’s Super League side Chelsea.
Women’s football dramatically contrasts with the men’s game in openly talking about same-sex relationships at elite levels. While the Premier League is still waiting for an active player to come out as gay, Carter, a key supporter of the Rainbow Laces campaign, hopes she can embolden others by talking about her relationship.
“I think I was – and probably still am – more comfortable than Ann is with publicising our relationship,” she said previously for England Football.
“But that is just because Ann is a very private person whereas I am more of a ‘the whole world could know and I wouldn’t really care’ kind of person. Over time and because I will say whatever, she has kind of got used to it and goes with it. She doesn’t shout from the rooftop about it but equally, when she is asked, it is not a secret either.” At least the chances of the players’ nightmare scenario of facing off in a penalty shootout on Sunday are slim; both have been substitutes at the tournament, and are likely to start the final on the bench, with 90,000 fans expected to descend on Wembley.
If Carter is any good at lip-reading, she could be a useful spy looking over at the German dugout, however. She described in 2020 how she had been learning Berger’s native tongue. “I’m trying to learn German – Ann-katrin is obviously from Germany so I’ve been trying to do a little bit every day,” she said.
Carter says she still sees Berger, 31, as a “role model” as well as a partner. “Of course it’s nice to have her here [at Chelsea] but when you arrive at football, you’re off doing your own thing,” Carter told Telegraph Sport last year. “We were together before at Birmingham, it’s nothing new.
For me, she’s another role model to look up to.”
The 24-year-old, whose talents were discovered as a schoolgirl playing for her hometown team of Warwick Juniors, says of her openness about their relationship: “Not everybody is as comfortable announcing to the world who they are with but I think that is the same in straight and gay relationships.
“I think for a lot of people it might depend on your profile. For example if you are a bigger-name player then you might get more scrutiny on it.
“Also, if your family are not as comfortable about it then it might be harder to make it so public. So I think it depends on each person’s private situation. And equally they might just simply view it as it is nobody else’s business so might not want to say. So there could be a lot of reasons but whatever the situation, we should respect each other.”
Carter and Berger have not been the only couple at Chelsea on opposite international sides in recent years. Sweden’s Magdalena Eriksson and Denmark’s Pernille Harder were caught on camera kissing at the 2019 Women’s World Cup, becoming a defining image of the tournament, with women’s sport held up as an example of inclusivity.
Carter said: “I’d say we’re fortunate we can be who we are in the women’s game. It’s going to take a long time for that to be the case in the men’s game.
“In one way you could say [WSL is] leading the way, but because women’s football wasn’t professional beforehand, there was no judgment around
it, no big media attention. Our fans already knew who we were – it wasn’t a big shock.”