Lauren James trained with Arsenal’s senior team at just 14 but was kicked out after complaints from players
CHELSEA forward Lauren James is set to take the Women’s World Cup by storm this summer.
The 21-year-old, who is now a regular in Sarina Wiegman’s England team, first burst onto the scene when she made her professional debut for Arsenal in 2017.
But prior to her first Women’s Super League outing, she endured a turbulent time in North London.
James’ dad, Nigel, has revealed that she was promoted to train with the Arsenal women’s first team at the age of just 14, but some senior players took issue with her involvement.
In an interview with The Beautiful Game podcast, Nigel said: “She was too good to train with the Arsenal girls when she first went there.
“So Arsenal tried something, Pedro (Martinez Losa) who was the coach at the time, brought her in to train with the women.
“She was probably about 14 at the time. She stayed in her digs for a couple of nights and they got a tutor to teach her, so she trained with the women.
“It was all good hearing it, but your 14 year-old daughter is now training with women who are 35, 28, they were grown women.
“So when you are on the pitch it is football, but off the pitch they had nothing in common.
“What people would see is this little girl. Some could take it and put their arm around her and some couldn’t take it and said ‘you shouldn’t be here, you should be at school.’
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“She (Lauren) would pick up the good bits from someone and then the negative parts from others.
“The manager left, another manager came in. There was a game she played in where the manager let her take a penalty. She took the penalty, but the next day senior players didn’t like it at the time.”
Despite James’ outstanding ability and potential, some Arsenal players even requested that she was removed from first team training due to her age.
The forward’s dad added: “They then asked for Lauren to be removed from the first team squad at Arsenal and to go back in the academy, but the solution was she train with the academy boys.
“This had never happened before so it was a big thing. Some parents didn’t like it.
“But she was superb and did very well. At the end of the season when she was 15-and-a-half, Arsenal then said you won’t be with the women, you’ll play with the academy girls. I saw her playing with girls her own age as sort of a demotion.
“That is why we needed to leave.”
After leaving Arsenal, James joined Manchester United in July 2018.
She made her club debut in a Women’s Championship match the following month and went on to help the Red Devils achieve promotion to the WSL.
James, the younger sister of Chelsea star Reece, then spent two more years in Manchester before joining the Blues in 2021.
She has since won two WSL titles and three FA Cups.
The forward will take part in her first major tournament this summer with England.
She narrowly missed out on a place in Wiegman’s European Campionship-winning squad last summer before making her international debut in September.