MAISIE SYMONDS’S journey from an England fan watching the Lionesses win Euro 2022 from the stands to her own first international call-up has been far from straightforward.

The 22-year-old Brighton midfielder – named in Sarina Wiegman’s 24-strong squad for the upcoming Nations League doubleheader against Belgium – was at Wembley for England’s greatest moment to date a little shy of three years ago, by then a regular herself at under-19 level.

When Symonds travelled to the final, she had thought she was suffering with a cold. But after reporting for Brighton’s pre-season training camp, she would be hospitalised with glandular fever and hepatitis, a combination which then led to a ruptured spleen.

It took several months for Symonds to recover enough to be able to return to training but, when she did, she ruptured an ankle ligament, a further setback that delayed her return until April 2023.

“I think it was literally my journey to Wembley, that was rough,” Symonds recalled of coming down with her illness. “I had glandular fever then, but I didn’t know. I just thought I had a cold but obviously I was going to go to the game.

“That summer I started pre-season and then it just got worse and worse and worse I got really, really ill. That was a long thing to come back from, I think I was out for six months and I got re-injured for most of the season.

“At that moment I probably wouldn’t have predicted that I’d be in the squad within a couple of years, but I’m very lucky for the people I’ve got around me to help me come back from something like that, and I’m really proud to be here.”

The attacking midfielder, signed for Brighton by former Lionesses boss Hope Powell, arrived at camp on Monday, joined by Brighton team-mates Fran Kirby and Nikita Parris.

When England face Belgium first at Ashton Gate on Friday, then again in Leuven next Tuesday, Wiegman will be without midfielders Georgia Stanway, Ruby Mace and Laura Blindkilde Brown. That has opened the door for Symonds, but even so the call-up came as a surprise.

“The day before [the call] we’d lost a game and I was in a bit of a bad mood,” Symonds said. “I was about to review the game and I had an unknown caller coming through. I wasn’t going to answer…in case it was spam or something.

“Then Sarina just said, ‘Hello Maisie, it’s Sarina’. I couldn’t get the words out to reply to her. I just kept saying, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you’. I almost said, ‘Are you sure’? Luckily I didn’t say that.”