The 77th edition of the SJA British Sports Awards – the longest-established awards of their kind in Britain – will take place on Tuesday, November 11, 2025; for the second consecutive year, the Awards will be announced live on Sky Sports News; SJA members are invited to VOTE NOW to decide the big three prizes on offer; our SJA Academy members are making their cases for the awards…

 

Leah Williamson has just won the Champions League. 

“Right now is the happiest I’ve ever been in my whole entire life – I know I lived a dream,” she says as she lifts the trophy outside the Emirates Stadium.

A dream, perhaps. But she has a confession too.

“I always said ‘trophy for England over trophy for Arsenal’ because you don’t pick your country, it’s a bit more of a fate thing.”

And 2025 was certainly Williamson’s year of fate.

 

Back in 2022, she captained England to European Championship glory on home soil, playing every minute.

At 25 years old, Williamson had ended 58 years of hurt as English football’s poster girl.

But an ACL injury ruled her out of the 2023 World Cup and she only returned to action for boyhood club Arsenal last year.

But that’s the thing with Williamson – she doesn’t stop dreaming.

So when her Arsenal team roared back with four goals against Lyon to reach the 2025 Champions League final, the dream of a first English win in the competition since 2007 seemed lucid.

The opponents: Barcelona. Home of the last four Ballon d’Ors and European champions in three of the past four years.

Arsenal dug in, with an imperious player-of-the-match Williamson marshalling a back line which did not concede a foul, let alone a goal, for the entire game.

Stina Blackstenius’ strike ensured the trophy headed to North London.

The mountain which perennial domestic champions Chelsea had sought to conquer had been summited, almost accidentally, by Arsenal.

Ian Wright eulogised, Katie McCabe sang her own song, and Williamson said she ‘lived a dream’.

But it was the Swiss summer that cemented 2025 as Leah Williamson’s year.

In Switzerland, where commuters drift peacefully down the river to work and trains run like clockwork, England’s performances were anything but.

They escaped the group despite losing to France, then needed two late goals and penalties to beat Sweden in the quarter-finals.

That international trophy ‘fate’ was tested to its breaking point.

But despite everything, it held.

A 96th-minute equaliser and extra-time goal against Italy miraculously brought the Lionesses to their third major tournament final in a row.

In the final, Williamson was superb again, winning 100% of her tackles and not being dribbled past during the game.

And when it went to penalties, fate fell her way once – her missed penalty rendered insignificant by her teammates’ sharp shooting, who beamed as their captain lifted the trophy.

Her achievements earned her seventh place in the Ballon d’Or. Surely 2025 was the year Williamson stopped dreaming?

“I haven’t won everything,” she told the Guardian. “I’ve got a World Cup to win.”