\n<\/p>\n
When Millie Bright announced her retirement on Wednesday, her mum gave her a letter.<\/b><\/p>\n
But as Bright continues to wrestle with the emotions of her big announcement, she says she has been unable to read it all.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old retired from England duty last year and has now left Chelsea after 294 appearances, eight Women’s Super League titles, six FA Cups and four League Cups. <\/p>\n
A Euros winner in 2022, she has returned home to her family’s farm in Sheffield and is celebrating her dad’s 60th birthday – the sort of event she would have previously missed while juggling playing and training.<\/p>\n
Surrounded by her family and beloved horses, <\/b>Bright says she is “at peace” with the decision to retire after what she describes as the most challenging two years of her life. <\/p>\n
“Both physically and mentally, I have been ready to say goodbye,” Bright tells BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
“The mental side of things for me, personally… life’s been very difficult, and the amount of abuse I have dealt with has been too much to handle.<\/p>\n
“I think over the past year I have lost myself as a person, and it has taken me a long time to rebuild myself.”<\/p>\n
Bright withdrew from England’s Euros squad in 2025, as she felt she was unable to give 100% mentally and physically, and says that announcement led to her receiving a significant amount <\/b>of abuse.<\/p>\n
“It was difficult because I was trying to do the right thing for me and the team. I didn’t expect the abuse,” she says.<\/p>\n
“I expected people to be like: ‘Why are you making this decision?’ I can tolerate that, but to question my integrity, my passion and dedication as a player… I can’t ever accept that.<\/p>\n
“We are still humans, we have a life outside of football and I think that is forgotten 99% of the time.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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When Millie Bright announced her retirement on Wednesday, her mum gave her a letter. But as Bright continues to wrestle with the emotions of her big announcement, she says she has been unable to read it all. The 32-year-old retired from England duty last year and has now left Chelsea after 294 appearances, eight Women’s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}