White, who scored 52 goals for England, announced her decision to retire after helping her country win their first major trophy by beating eight-times champions Germany in the final of the European Championship last month.

The 33-year-old said retirement was far from her mind last year but an acupuncture session arranged by her club Manchester City led to a punctured lung which forced her to rethink.

“I had a challenging time last year — coming back from the Olympics, I basically punctured my lung. It was a lot for me to have to go through and a big reason that accelerated my wanting to retire,” White told the BBC.

“It punctured my lung which isn’t something that happens normally, obviously. It was a really traumatic time for me and something that I’m still figuring out now, still working through.”

White said she had a procedure which involved re-inflating her lung and that she still suffered from “phantom pain”.

“I had to wait for the lung to basically inflate again. I had a needle put into my chest to drag all the air out then hopefully the lung would inflate again — which it has,” added White.

“I went very tunnel vision. It wasn’t until a good two or three months later, it just hit me like a train, what actually happened and how traumatic it was… It was a big factor in my year and leading up to the decision of wanting to retire.”