Everton Women’s record signing of Ruby Mace follows a ‘very stressful few weeks’

In a nondescript hospitality box overlooking a grey Goodison Park, Ruby Mace is leading an anthropological tour of her tattoos. This is the finale of a media marathon day for the 21-year-old midfielder and soon-to-be Everton Women’s record signing: from clandestine rendezvous to signing photos, an official club interview, and ceaseless requests for Mace to ‘look here, smile, that’s it, so natural’.

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The former Leicester City player, Everton’s ninth signing of the summer and one of the country’s rising midfield talents, takes it all in her stride, despite the surrounding noise — a club-record fee (a six-figure sum far north of Everton’s initial £100,000 offer, according to sources), a summer-long boardroom tug-of-war with Leicester City for her signature, and a move that, at one point, felt like it might never transpire.

“It’s a lot,” she tells The Athletic, laughing at her own understatement, on the eve of the three-year deal being announced. “I heard about Everton this summer. I wanted to do it immediately. As soon as I spoke to (head coach) Brian (Sorensen), I knew he was a good one. He helped so much. I’m very close with Yuka Momiki (another Everton signing this summer). We’ve been talking for so long. She told me how good it is here, how much I’d love it.

“But the reality wasn’t looking very good. I had one year left on my contract. It’s been a very stressful few weeks.”

That is where the tattoos come in. “Sometimes I look down in a game,” she says, pointing to two small reminders on her left wrist: Be You. Smile. “That one’s especially important to me. I’m someone who wants to wake up tomorrow and be happy. Because as long as I’m smiling and I’m happy, I’ll play my best football.”

There are more tattoos: the ruby diamond on her left tricep (“that’s obvious”), the words “feel, heal, life, explore, love, change” emblazoned on her bicep (“words I live by”), the phrase “no rain, no flowers” looping low along her wrist (“also words I live by”).

There are her and her siblings’ birth years; the words “she believed she could, so she did” crawling down her spine (“That one hurt,” she says, miming herself splayed on a tattoo bed).

“This one I got the other day!” Mace turns to the left, revealing a bijou assemblage of three numbers along her upper right arm. “It’s actually eight-three-one,” she beams. “Eight letters, three words, one meaning. I love you.”

Ruby Mace has signed a three-year deal with Everton from Leicester City (Everton Football Club)

She pulls her arm back, allowing her new deep blue Everton sleeve to cover the new addition to what is not so much a Pinterest-inspired Jackson Pollock spread of ink, so much as a canvas to the sacrifice, the love, the people who have played a part in her burgeoning career.

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On the other side of the box’s blue wall are Mace’s mum and dad, Paula and Colin. The pair have made the four-hour schlep to Liverpool for the preparations for their daughter’s unveiling. They’ll make the four-hour schlep back south to Suffolk after this, then back up on Sunday for Everton’s Women’s Super League (WSL) opener against Liverpool at Anfield.

Both demur when The Athletic’s eyebrows raise at the travel time. How else does something like this happen to one’s child without bottomless hours spent on motorways? The M25, the M4, the 2am traffic jams on the M6 because of an inexplicable oil spill on the way home from an Arsenal youth training session.

Remember the tubs of car-warmed pasta in the backseat, the homework hurriedly finished on the way to school before the sun rose the next morning, the school diplomas that Mace didn’t even pick up because, well, school isn’t football? Remember the day her mum decided to buy a place near Arsenal’s youth academy, where Mace started her career, only for Mace to learn months later that Manchester City, on the other side of the country, wanted her?

And remember the players who didn’t make it? And how, for a brief moment at City, as Mace’s playing time was reduced to single digits from the bench, a time that Mace describes as both the “best and worst time of my career”, there was a worry that perhaps Mace might suffer that fate?

But Mace didn’t, a truth that manifests blatantly as Mace waves happily from Goodison’s gantry, flicking an easy smile to the camera as someone proposes logical methods of transferring her two cats, Marco and Marla, from Leicester to Liverpool.

Ruby Mace puts pressure on Chelsea’s Wieke Kaptein during a WSL match last December (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

Mace doesn’t sugarcoat the stress of the preceding weeks, the fact that her “goodbye” to the club she joined last summer on a two-year deal was ultimately a message in a group chat as she was swept up north.

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The midfielder found solace in conversations with her mum and phone calls with her sister, Molly. She took a pre-season trip to Los Angeles to visit her brother, Charlie, who now works as a football coach but who went through youth setups at Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur. Between putting her through her paces, her brother sat on the Zoom calls with Everton.

“He never made it (to professional level), unfortunately,” Mace says. “He always told my mum, ‘Don’t give up on Ruby’, because she used to drive me across the country. He said it’ll be worth it one day.” Mace smiles. “He’s so proud to have the family name on the back of the shirt now.”

At Everton, Mace believes she can add to her one England cap, earned on December 3, 2024, a date canonised on her right forearm. Yet, not until the arrival of new owners, The Friedkin Group, in January did Everton feel they were in a position to present themselves to her as a long-term destination.

“Going to Leicester gave me a platform to just play football and be happy,” says Mace. “I want to step up, bring everything I’ve learned. This felt like the best place to do it, being around a team which, for me, feels like a level up.”

Five days out from Everton’s WSL opener, Mace is hopeful she can make her debut. She’s trained twice with the team, feeling good after a full recovery from a knee injury sustained in March.

“What a way to start the season,” Mace quips of an Anfield debut. “Like, hello, I’m here.”

(Top photo: Everton Football Club)

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