“We were like: ‘If Chloe scores this, we win, right? Wait a second – this is it!’” That is what went through Anna Moorhouse’s mind as she stood alongside her teammates while Chloe Kelly stepped up to take England’s decisive penalty in the Euro 2025 final. Suddenly it was “just running and pure emotion” for the goalkeeper and her fellow substitutes. Moorhouse was the third-fastest to reach Kelly in the ensuing sprint, after Esme Morgan and Maya Le Tissier.
The delirious celebrations continued all the way to the Mall in London two days later but by Wednesday that week Moorhouse had landed back in Florida to rejoin Orlando Pride and play a National Women’s Soccer League fixture on Sunday. The 30-year-old says she slept for the whole of her transatlantic flight before receiving a joyous welcome from her teammates at the club, where she was soon signing a contract extension to stay with the defending NWSL champions until the end of 2027.
“Orlando has kind of become my home over the past couple of years,” Moorhouse says. “I’m really pleased to have signed. Playing overseas, it takes a little bit of pressure off. You don’t have that constant pressure from media and stuff like that. You don’t have to worry about anything like that. It’s just a nicer life out here to take away that mental load and that pressure.”
Few football environments could provide more pressure than being part of the England squad in Switzerland, where Moorhouse experienced a major international tournament for the first time, especially after the defeat in the opening game, against France. Still, as she says, the Lionesses stuck together to deliver an “insane” victory.
“We were very unified … I think it showed on the pitch more than anything. We had a big meeting after the France game to kind of come together and be like: ‘We can either keep on playing this way or we can stick together and get behind each other and kind of dig in,’ which I think you then saw through the rest of the tournament.
Photograph: Richard Sellers/Apl/Sportsphoto
“Sometimes when you’re in a group of people like that, spending so much time together, you can get sick of each other, but it wasn’t the case. We would go to the spa every afternoon, hang out and just enjoyed each other’s company, and I feel like it did really translate on to the pitch when we were playing. We didn’t do it the easy way; we definitely made it a lot more hard work and my heart rate and my blood pressure has been through the roof, honestly. But it [was] just incredible. I don’t think I’ve processed it still, the way that we won, the way that we came back in all those games. The whole team did an amazing job, one team bringing it home.”
As one of two backup goalkeepers behind Hannah Hampton, the former Arsenal, West Ham and Bordeaux player was part of the goalkeeping union preparing for the possibility of penalty shootouts. Moorhouse worked with Hampton, Manchester City’s Khiara Keating and England’s goalkeeping coach, Darren Ward.
“Hannah had a great tournament,” Moorhouse says. “The penalty shootouts – just incredible. The work that goes in behind that success is a lot. And honestly, as goalkeepers, we don’t even see that: it’s the stuff from the analysis, it’s from Darren doing the work behind that. And then for 30 minutes, we talk about it. And then Hannah has to produce in the penalty shootout, which she did. I think we got the information and made the right judgments every time. Hannah does the work and me, Khiara and Darren behind the scenes are, not influencing, but kind of trying to guide her into making those decisions and we have conversations surrounding that. It’s just really nice to see her make those saves to win games.”
Moorhouse is enjoying a sustained spell as Orlando’s first-choice keeper, keeping 14 clean sheets in 29 regular-season games last term to help them win their first NWSL title. “I’m enjoying being the No 1,” she says. “I’m doing everything I can to stay there. I’m enjoying the pressure that comes with it and also the privilege that comes with that too.”
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Her team sit fourth in the NWSL before Friday’s fixture against her England teammate Jess Carter’s Gotham FC, with Kansas City Current leading the 14-team league; the top eight enter the playoffs. Moorhouse credits a lot of Orlando’s success to their English head coach, the former Middlesbrough defender Seb Hines: “The main part for me is stability. I think historically the club had a lot of turnover of players and staff so keeping a core group of players together over the past couple of years has really helped. And everyone knowing what Seb expects and those principles that he has really helped.
“He puts a lot of onus on us as players to take accountability for what we’re doing on the pitch. He gives us a core set of values and things that we want to achieve on the pitch, but it’s really up to us in our creativity to manage the way that we play. I’m not saying the players decide, but we have an input in how we want to play. It’s definitely a holistic approach.
“We had some unbelievable achievements last year. We just want to keep going and try and catch Kansas back up. They’re having an incredible season this year. We can definitely do it again. We just need to stick together as a team and keep playing the way that we know we can. We can still win things. We’re not done. We’re not finished.”
