Laura Coombs calls time at the top

Manchester City’s box-to-box midfielder Laura Coombs has announced her retirement from the game after a glittering career. Here, we chart her influence on the game…

Laura Coombs has called time on her remarkable BWSL career.

Having done so, the 35-year-old London-born Manchester City midfielder can look back on well over a decade of extraordinary achievements for both club and country. Having started out at Arsenal as a teenager, she leaves the sport having played for some of the country’s biggest clubs and having played a role in helping England to a first World Cup final in Australia and New Zealand.

It has been quite some ride, and one that would have been unimaginable when she first kicked a ball in anger in Gravesend.

"Until I was about ten I didn't even know there were girls' teams, now I hear our games advertised on the radio!,” she reflected in an interview back in 2015. “The introduction of the BWSL 1 and 2 has been massive and the game has grown tremendously. I would like to see more teams in the leagues and more teams getting the chance to train full-time—I think that is the only way the game is going to grow."

At the time, she couldn’t have foreseen the changes that were set to transform the women’s game in this country. But as she prepares to exit the top flight, she leaves a sport in the best possible shape to build and maintain a future that players like her did so much to forge.

“I had a great childhood and was brought up in Dartford, where I was able to have a kickabout with friends,” she told The Fold London in 2023. “I never thought I’d be a professional football player. I came from a place where it was a boys’ game and I was the only girl.”

Throughout it all, Coombs has remained a calming presence in every team she has played in, whether that’s Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, or Manchester City. That’s quite a CV, and one that reflects the esteem in which Coombs is held within the English game.

Just ask Sarina Wiegman, who recalled the midfielder after an eight-year absence on the eve of the 2023 World Cup. In doing so, Coombs became the oldest player in the England squad. But it’s testimony to both her ability and her personality that she slotted into the squad perfectly, firstly at the Arnold Clark Cup and then at the tournament itself.

It’s at club-level, though, that Coombs will be best remembered by supporters up and down the country.

A double winner with Chelsea in 2014-15, coming on as a substitute in the dying minutes as the Londoners beat Notts County 1-0 at Wembley, Coombs would go on to win the league and FA Cup with Manchester City after making the switch from Anfield to the Etihad back in the summer of 2019.

Coombs was under no illusions as to expectation levels when she headed to the light blue half of Manchester after signing a new one-year deal in August 2025.

"This club should be at the top and if we're saying anything less than cup wins and top of the league, we're doing it a disservice," she said. "It was pretty easy for me (to stay at City); it feels like home and here I've developed so much as a player and as a person, and I want to continue that development. It's good, I feel like there's a good solid core of us who really want to take the club forward and we want to improve things for the next generation coming through as well and I'm really happy to be a part of that."

She’ll be going out on a high, with this City side in with a chance to win a first BWSL title since 2020 in her final season at the club.

“This team is definitely goal-hungry,” she said. “Everyone wants to get on the scoresheet even past the 90th minute and that’s a sign of a really good team—we never give up. We just want to get the biggest results every week."

"(The mood among the squad is) so positive. It's amazing looking around and everyone has a smile on their face and it just builds week after week."

A smile was rarely far from Coombs' face when she was patrolling the midfield in the blue of Chelsea and City or the red of Arsenal and Liverpool. Her opponents, meanwhile, traditionally wore a grimace. The small girl from Gravesend has come an awfully long way.

She’ll be missed.

Word credit: Rich Edwards