As London City Lionesses open their Barclays Women's Super League campaign tonight, Nikita Parris explains why a summer of ambition suits her, and why she has never let go of a grass verge in Toxteth.
Nikita Parris begins her second season with London City Lionesses tonight, another chapter in a career that has carried her from the top of the domestic game to the international stage, collecting trophies and her fair share of memorable moments along the way.
She is not looking back.
There is plenty in front of her. London City Lionesses spent the summer making their ambitions abundantly clear, adding a string of stellar names, Alexia Putellas and Mary Earps among them, to a squad that finished sixth last season. The target now is considerably higher.
"Why not be aspirational and say we want to be in them Champions League places," Parris says. "Top three. I think we have the quality to do it."
It is a bold declaration, and one entirely in keeping with the mood around the club. Since Michelle Kang took ownership, London City Lionesses have gone from a resilient BWSL2 side to a club with the resources and the appetite to challenge at the top of the domestic game. Parris was drawn to that sense of possibility, and credits Kang with being prepared to "put her money where her mouth is".
"My mindset is: I want to win. I want to be in an environment where I'm continuing to be challenged, where I'm growing on and off the pitch," she says. "And I think this club gives me that amazing opportunity."
"Everyone's seen the transfer window that we've had and I think there's a lot of expectation that comes with that. We're all willing to put in the work to achieve the goals that we all want. We're creating a team here."
Fans, she promises, can expect "exciting football and a team that's willing to go toe-to-toe with anyone in the league".
Parris understands exactly what turning ambition into something tangible takes. She has been doing it since childhood.
Before the trophies, there was Toxteth. Her first football memories are of the local court and a grass verge, played with her brothers and neighbours, with clothes for goalposts because there were no proper ones.
"Our parents weren't too happy about that," she says, laughing.
A neighbour later painted a goal in his garden, which gave them another makeshift arena. Parris remembers those games less for the quality of the facilities than for how they made her feel.
"I remember being so happy there."
For all the years she has spent in elite football, and all the demands that come with it, she remains fiercely attached to that first feeling of kicking a ball. She did not enter the more formal environment of Everton until she was 11, spending her formative years in grassroots football, first playing with boys and then helping to create an all-girls team at Kingsley United, her local community club. That, she says, was where she could "truly be myself, be free, express myself".
That freedom has been a constant ever since. Ask Parris what she would tell her younger self and she does not hesitate.
"Never lose the childlike feel that you experienced when you first played football. That ability to be able to play freely, have fun and take risks. Continue to harvest it and keep it."
It is a poetic answer in a game increasingly dissected by data, tactics and statistics.
Her childhood heroes were a pair of prolific forwards: Julie Fleeting and Thierry Henry.
Fleeting, because "she'd always score in the Women's FA Cup final. Scoring goals was something I wanted to do."
Henry, because "he lit up the Premier League. I saw attributes of my game in him and I always wanted to emulate the goals he scored."
Which makes her answer predictable when she is asked which player from history she would most like to have played alongside. "Thierry Henry, it has to be. The partnership would be unreal!"
There is a neat circularity to Parris's relationship with the game. One of her favourite memories is winning the Champions League with Olympique Lyonnais, a night that took her straight back to watching Liverpool's 2005 final on television as a child and imagining something similar for herself.
"I always said to myself, 'I want that moment'," she says. "And when I got it, I just reflected back on that. It was a journey and it came full circle."
She speaks openly about the mentality elite football demands, and counts herself fortunate to have had good mentors within the game. She is equally clear that adversity is part of the same education.
"No one wants to experience the downsides and the hurdles you have to overcome," she says. "But without them I don't think you are ever truly able to discover things that you never thought you were capable of."
For Parris, there is another constant in that process: faith.
"When I'm going through a rough time, I might not see it, but I believe that I can overcome it, and there's something that's going to guide me."
It has been there since childhood. Her grandmother took her to church every week, where she became involved in the service as an altar girl.
"It really gave me a grounding."
Grounding feels apt for someone whose career has taken her so far from where it began. Parris has never forgotten the community that shaped her, which is part of the reason she set up her own academy, NP17. Its purpose, she says, extends beyond producing the next generation of footballers.
Everyone wants their young person to be the next Mbappé, she jokes. "But ultimately football gives you so much more opportunity than just being a player."
Football, as she describes it, is a "universal language", capable of bringing communities together and giving young people a pathway they might not otherwise have considered.
It is the same pathway that opened for her when a group of friends and family turned a grass verge into a pitch.
The stage is a good deal bigger now. Tonight a new BWSL season begins, and with London City Lionesses' investment, recruitment and ambition, there is a sense that this could be a defining one for a club intent on challenging the established order.
