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Black and white jerseys hang from a washing line tied on to a shipping container and, inside the adjacent clubhouse, a group of lads are sipping cold beers on a bank holiday Monday afternoon. This is St Martins AC, a quintessential community club hidden down the narrowest of side roads on the island of Guernsey. Hanging proudly in a frame above the club’s bar is a No 4 shirt bearing the name: “Le Tiss”.
As the Manchester United captain enters her old clubhouse to greet her former teammates, they immediately exchange banter. Maya Le Tissier is back home among those who saw her grow up from a toddler kicking a ball around to a 23-year-old who will, on Sunday, lead her team out at Wembley.
“I owe everything to the island and my support network,” Le Tissier says, looking out across the St Martins pitch where she used to play in a hugely talented midfield alongside the Bournemouth men’s player Alex Scott. “It’s not quite Old Trafford, but coming here is just as special.”
The match that changed her life was not actually played on the island, but instead came at Southampton’s training centre in Marchwood. It was a game she was not originally meant to play. A 10-year-old Le Tissier had accompanied her dad to watch his boys’ academy side face Southampton.
“She came on the trip with her boots in her bag, carrying the drinks for the lads. We had about four injuries so we were down a player and Maya said ‘can I go on and play?’ and we said ‘yes, of course,’” recalls Rob Jones, a family friend and former coach of Le Tissier. “At the end of the game, the Southampton coaches said: ‘Who is that girl? She’s amazing.’ From that moment she sort of had an epiphany, realising how good she was.”
Jones is speaking in the cafe at Guernsey’s immaculate, newly built stadium, Victoria Park, where he is the stadium director, and where Le Tissier is helping out with a youth session before making the youngsters’ days with signed balls and selfies. She is greeted like a big celebrity. Some of the youngsters had been on the same flight as her the night before, having gone specifically to watch her play at Old Trafford in the Manchester derby. When she was their age, though, she was in a boys’ team.
“In Guernsey football, there was no pathway for girls at the time, 12, 13 years ago,” Jones says. “There was girls’ kick-a-round stuff on Sunday mornings but she was far too good for that. Playing with the boys is where she got her steel, determination and willpower. She read the game really well and, physically, she was stronger than the lads at 11, 12. She was not afraid to get stuck in.”
With a population of around 64,000, in Guernsey, footballers who “make it” are rare. Tell a taxi driver you are here to interview a footballer and they ask: “Maya or Matt?” The Lionesses defender is not a direct relation to the former Southampton forward. The surname Le Tissier, deriving from the old French word for a weaver, is common here.
To call the island peaceful would be an understatement. Cars are often left unlocked. On the day of our visit, the worst offence reported in the local newspaper was a man urinating in public. With its charming coves, it is easy to see why Le Tissier loves to return, still training at St Martins AC to keep fit when she is home for Christmas.
She was coached by her dad, Darren, from the age of four, enjoying huge success alongside Scott – who was a year younger but so skilful he was playing up an age group – but she would eventually leave the island to pursue her career, a decision she says was “easy”, adding: “That’s all I wanted to do. I think my family found it hard, with me leaving at quite a young age, but hopefully they can see that it all played out well. I wanted to create a pathway, because no one had ever done it before me in the women’s game from Guernsey, to show people they can break through.”
She chose Brighton, where she would combine training with studying at the nearby Worthing College, cycling the journey between the two, and staying with a host family. Later the same year, still aged 16, she made her senior debut. Her proud dad, who can still recall the Rudimental and Jess Glynne songs that were playing in the car as he and Maya drove to Brighton to look around the facilities, recalls: “Hope [Powell] and Amy [Merricks] were just so good for Maya. Maya would swallow every bit of information she was given. Hope used to say: ‘You’ve got to push yourself, there’s no point swimming in a comfy lane.’ We were so grateful for Brighton.”
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Remarkably, since cementing her place in Brighton’s team in the 2020-21 campaign, she has started every WSL match for five consecutive seasons, the first two of those at Brighton and the past three at Manchester United. Further still, she has played every single minute of the past two league campaigns. The secret is her dedication to keeping fit and Darren says: “Maya’s different. She sacrifices absolutely everything to ensure she’s 100%. She realises that your career is short. She’s very happy-go-lucky off the pitch but, when it comes to football on the pitch, she’s just steely and determined to win and nothing gets in the way of that.”
This season, despite only turning 23 in April, she has worn the captain’s armband. Gabby George, her fellow United defender, says Le Tissier is “everything we would want from a captain”. Accepting the captaincy is something Le Tissier admits took careful thought, given her age. “I was honoured. It’s not something that I thought would ever come, with Zel [Katie Zelem] leaving. I had a real, big think about whether I wanted to do it. It’s not something I would ever take lightly. It’s a big thing. I had a coffee with Marc [Skinner, the United manager] to speak about it and I spoke to my family and thought: ‘Yes’. I’ve definitely had to develop my leadership qualities, mostly off the pitch, as a leader, [but] I’ve really enjoyed it.”
We move to Icart Point, a clifftop with beautiful sea views and one of her favourite dog-walking spots, 24 hours after she and George had helped United clinch Women’s Champions League qualification by coming from 2-0 down to draw with Manchester City. A beaming Le Tissier says: “To come back from two down at Old Trafford, with so much on the line, it just shows how strong we are now – we might not have the most experienced team but our mentality is so strong.”
Next, attention turns to Wembley, where they will contest the Cup final for a third consecutive year, this time as the holders, after last year’s 4-0 win over Tottenham. “That was honestly like the best day of my life,” Le Tissier says. “We knew there were probably quite a few players who were going to leave so to be able to do it with that team … [she pauses to smile] and also the year before we’d lost to Chelsea, so we knew how badly that hurt. [Winning] 4-0, it was sunny, all my family were there, it was just a sick day.”
For Sunday’s showdown with Chelsea, about 30 of her family and friends will be there and – by the sounds of it – the flights from Guernsey will be jam-packed with residents heading to watch the island’s favourite daughter. Whether she lifts the Cup or not, she has already won this island’s heart.
