The former Lioness is still breaking records, becoming the first footballer ever to lift the Glitterball trophy

‘I never thought we could win. I had no idea and no belief that we could’: Karen Carney and Carlos Gu won this year’s Strictly Come Dancing Credit: Guy Levy/BBC

This has been quite the year for English sportswomen. The Lionesses won the Euros, the Red Roses won the World Cup, and on Saturday night Karen Carney – 144 England caps, WSL Hall-of-Famer – hoisted Strictly Come Dancing’s Glitterball trophy above her head. The temptation is to suggest that the BBC redo Sports Personality of the Year to allow the public to vote for her in that too. The first footballer to win Strictly; at 38, the oldest woman to win – six years after she retired, Carney is still breaking records.

Monday morning and Carney’s Strictly success, shared with her professional partner Carlos Gu, has not yet sunk in. “I’m still overwhelmed,” she says. “I never thought we could win. I had no idea and no belief that we could.” So overwhelmed is she that Carney still hasn’t looked at her phone, which has been flooded with messages. “I haven’t had the capacity to do it yet. I’m so appreciative of the messages, but I just don’t know where to start.”

After the cameras stopped rolling on Saturday night, and the cast and crew partied on the Strictly dancefloor, Carney sat in her dressing room by herself for 30 minutes, struggling to process what had just happened. Instead, she tidied the room. “Eventually everyone came up and said, ‘There’s a big party downstairs, why are you not there?’” Reports suggest that Carney eventually joined a raucous party, which involved presenter Tess Daly leading a sing-along of Three Lions in Carney’s honour. Carney, the Strictly superfan, hasn’t processed that yet either. “It’s not sunk in. Strictly is the gift that keeps on giving, right?”

‘Strictly is the gift that keeps on giving, right?’: Carney and Gu in week three Credit: Guy Levy/BBC

Footballers aren’t supposed to win Strictly Come Dancing. They are game, flat-footed clompers, who do their best to shift those aching hamstrings around the dancefloor. But they aren’t winners. Before this series, a footballer had not even made the semi-finals. Duly, Carney went into the opening episode as one of the unfancied underdogs. By the end of that first evening, her football-themed jive put her top of the leaderboard, with a score of 31. Notice was served. The girl could dance.

The next few weeks were more difficult. Carney has Scheuermann’s disease, which causes excessive curvature of the upper spine. Ballroom dancing requires perfect posture. Carney did not know whether she could do it, and her week two tango scored a paltry 20. “Weeks two to five, it felt like it didn’t click. I wasn’t progressing, I really struggled, and I lost a bit of confidence,” she says.

For the next three weeks, Carney scored respectable but unspectacular mid-20s scores. And then came Hallowe’en and that barnstorming Peaky Blinders-inspired Argentine tango. It scored 38. “That was the turning point,” she says.

Confidence was a major factor in why Carney decided to do Strictly, apart from the fact she’s a committed fan of the show. It seems odd that a garlanded international footballer, in-demand pundit, and someone with a master’s degree and an MBA (and an MBE and OBE) should lack confidence, but Carney’s recent career has not been plain sailing.

As a pundit for ITV and TNT Sports, she has received vile abuse online (she deleted her Twitter account in 2020), as well as being picked out by former player Joey Barton, who said she lacked the credibility and experience to comment on men’s football following an appearance on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football in 2023.

“Entering the pundit space has crushed me over the last five or six years,” she says, visibly emotional. “Imagine, since you’ve been eight years old, being told: ‘You shouldn’t’, ‘You can’t’, ‘You won’t’. ‘Why?’ And when I retired and started punditry: ‘You shouldn’t’, ‘You can’t’, ‘Why?’, ‘No’. I didn’t realise the impact of all that. After that jive in the very first week, I got positive reinforcement for what felt like the first time in 30 years. And I just couldn’t cope with it.”

Strictly, she says, was about finding herself again. “People asked me, ‘Why have you picked the biggest show in the country if you need to rebuild your confidence?’ But I love the show so much, and I always felt this was a safe place for me to go. And in my heart, in my gut, I knew this was the place where I could rebuild again.”

‘Entering the pundit space has crushed me over the last five or six years’: Carney commenting on a Premier League match in 2022 Credit: Simon Stacpoole/Offside

While Carney’s journey has been a wonder to behold, the whole series has had its ups and downs. One of the bombshell moments was when hosts Daly and co-presenter Claudia Winkleman announced, mid-series, that they would be leaving the show at the end of the year. When they found out, Carney and Gu were unable to train for 45 minutes. “As a fan, it was devastating news. But when it settled, you think, ‘Oh wow, how privileged are we to be part of their last show?’” Not just be part of it – to win it. “It’s an honour. They’re incredible women.”

Less joyful have been the hoo-hahs surrounding contestants Thomas Skinner, who was the first celebrity to be voted out, and Amber Davies and Lewis Cope, who received criticism for their professional dance experience. Skinner has claimed the BBC rigged the voting against him to get him off the show, and that he is suing the corporation. While Carney’s PR steps in when I ask about that – it’s a firm “no” to questions about Skinner – the former Lioness has only positive things to say about Davies and Cope.

“All I know is that they’re brilliant people and they’ve created some amazing, magical moments for the show. I’ve said it before, I saw everybody on the show as a teammate. Everyone is different and that’s why we’re cast. I’m really excited to see where Amber and Lewis’s futures go. If they do [dancing] shows, I hope I get tickets. I’ll be there, cheering for them both.”
Carney with her England teammate Alex Scott, receiving their MBEs at Buckingham Palace in 2017 Credit: Geoff Pugh

While it’s clear that Davies and Cope have glittering stage careers ahead of them, might Carney be putting her newfound showbiz skills to good use? It seems, at least in the short term, probably not. “I think it just goes back to how it was before,” she says. “My employers knew how much I wanted to do this show and they gave me the time off to go and live my dream. But now I have to go back and fulfil my football obligations. There’s a lot of football out there, so I’m sure I’ll be busy.”

But does Carney return to the punditry studio a new woman? More confident, more resilient, more able to tune out the nonsense from the likes of Barton? “Definitely. At this moment in time, I’m more relaxed, so much happier, and hopefully I’ve become more confident. Time will tell. It’s only been 24 hours and I’ve not stepped out of the Strictly bubble yet.”

Unlike her male counterparts, Carney has had to spend her career justifying her existence. She has become a powerful voice in women’s football and, in 2022, chaired a seismic government review on the future of the women’s game. “In women’s sport, we do have a sense of a responsibility to leave the game in a better place than when you found it. You have that responsibility to every little girl, to make it better for them and make sure they don’t have the barriers and obstacles that we did.”
‘I’ve seen all these messages from people, saying how it’s inspired their little girl to play football’: Carney playing in the quarter final of the Women’s World Cup in 2007  Credit: Paul Gilham/Getty Images

Carney says she did not view Strictly in the same way – “It was just my favourite show” – but recent feedback is perhaps changing her mind. “I’ve seen all these messages from people, saying how it’s inspired their little girl to play football. But then I’ve also had a lot of messages about little boys who now want to dance. The thought of helping another little soul is the best feeling in the world. The Glitterball trophy? The Glitterball trophy is about people. It’s about all those little kids I heard on the radio this morning who said they can dance and play football, and it’s not gender specific. Oh my God, how incredible is that?”

With Christmas coming, Carney has a few days to decompress and spend time with her family before she has to go back to the day job (“I’ve got to frantically find some Christmas presents”). She’s soon to meet up with Gu, who she has not seen since Saturday night – the longest they have spent apart in 14 weeks. As I mention his name, she lights up. “When we first met, I couldn’t have thought of two more different people. We both felt, ‘Oh wow, how is this going to work?’” Gu, she says, initially did not think she’d get past week two. “I said to him, ‘We’re not here to win, we’re here to have fun.’”

Eventually, Carney will get around to reading those hundreds of messages on her phone. For now, she’s still enjoying the buzz of being the winner, as well as the souvenir she swiped from the set – Daly’s cue card announcing her and Gu as the victors. She’s going to have it framed. “I’ll always have a bit of Tess and Claudia with me,” she says. “What a gift that is.”

The Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special is on BBC One on Christmas Day at 5.30pm