Beth Mead, Vivianne Miedema and Ben Chilwell join Common Goal's Create the Space initiative

Beth Mead, Vivianne Miedema and Ben Chilwell have teamed up with other elite players and community organisations to form Create the Space, the largest player-led mental health movement in football.

Tottenham acting-captain Molly Bartrip, England players Ben Chilwell and Beth Mead, Arsenal and Netherlands striker Viv Miedema, the former Premier League player and mental health activist Marvin Sordell, and a host of international players call for others to join in taking action to tackle the mental health crisis.

Today, in the face of the deepening mental health crisis in football and society, a collective of leading players, community organisations and other football stakeholders, have launched Create the Space, a collective initiative to equip football at all levels with the knowledge, skills and resources to understand, prevent and deal with mental health issues.

Top players with lived experience in mental health challenges, which currently affect one in four people in the UK, have taken tangible action to harness the power of football to tackle mental wellbeing challenges. Bartrip, Chilwell, Mead, Miedema, and Sordell have called on athletes, clubs and football stakeholders to join Create the Space.

Through Create the Space, Common Goal is set to develop a holistic approach involving the whole football ecosystem, both top-down, from club executives, industry leaders, first team managers and elite players, and also bottom-up, from community organisations, fan groups and academies. In this way, Create the Space will not only use football as a tool to tackle mental health at a grassroots level, but also enable the elite level of the sport to become a space where everyone feels encouraged and comfortable to express themselves both on and off the pitch.

Based on the belief that everyone, at every level of the game has the potential to become a mental health champion and play an active role in creating a supportive environment for their peers, Common Goal will team up with Football Beyond Borders in the UK to pilot an integrated, experiential and holistic programme to empower mental health champions, ensuring that individuals throughout the football ecosystem are equipped to be supportive on and off the pitch.

Alongside Football Beyond Borders, Common Goal is also working with other leading community organisations who work with thousands of youth participants at high risk of exclusion such as Street League, Girls United and Bloomsbury Football. Common Goal has also worked in collaboration with leading mental health experts and institutions in the UK, U.S. and globally.

As well as the London-based players, Create the Space is being led in the U.S. by the San Diego Wave and USWNT defender Naomi Girma along with many of her USWNT and NWSL teammates. In North America, Common Goal will work with expert partner E-Motion to launch a pilot in 2024 with a focus on involving youth coaches working in the most at-risk communities across the USA. Common Goal is also engaging professional athletes to facilitate conversations around mental health within professional teams.

Other top international players, such as Portuguese international and Galatasaray midfielder, Sergio Oliveira, and Real Sociedad’s Spanish goalkeeper, Alex Remiro, are also supporting Create the Space.

Speaking about the initiative, Chilwell said: “I have had my own mental health journey and I felt unsure about where to turn to for support. It’s down to our generation to change this and ensure that throughout football, all the way from the elite level to young people in community organisations, we have each other’s backs and we’re equipped with the tools to help ourselves and those around us.

"We need to move from talking about mental health to taking action, and Create the Space provides the platform for everyone wishing to take action to play a role in tackling mental health issues, whether they are playing in the Premier league, in the playground, or in the park.”

Mead also discussed her own mental health journey, and said she wanted to help create an environment where people are comfortable talking about their own struggles: "In January I lost my Mum and because of the injury I couldn’t play football, which was always my escape, my happy place.

"Moments when people thought I was fine because of my outgoing personality, were very dark. It’s been a tough process to understand. Teammates, people at the club, family and friends that supported me were so important, without them I could have been in a far darker place. I want to help create an environment in which it’s totally normal to address mental health. There’s not a perfect way of dealing with it, but if you feel you’re not alone it helps so much. We need to normalise mental health and in doing so that would go a long way.”