It was Chloe Kelly’s wedding anniversary on Thursday. We know this because she posted about it to her 1 million Instagram followers, because everyone saw her personalised shin pad adorned with her wedding photo, and because she joked last week that she still hadn’t got her husband, Scott, a card.
But then Kelly has always had a rare gift for catching the eye. Her shirt-waving celebration at Wembley remains the defining image of the Euro 2022 triumph. Her trademark headband renders her instantly recognisable in a squad full of above-average-height blond women. Her hop-skip penalty run-up is unique. In a profession where many are naturally wary of being seen to court attention, Kelly is luxuriantly comfortable with being the focus of your gaze. As her teammate Esme Morgan puts it: “She just doesn’t really care what people think.”
Being England’s unashamed icon and an effortless content generator comes with clear off-pitch benefits. Be real: who here can name the wedding date of any other Lioness? Who here can imitate a typical Lauren Hemp penalty run-up? How many Jess Park goal celebrations have you seen commemorated in a tattoo? But of course the benefits can be felt on the field too, and so far this month England have been merrily reaping them.
There is a counterfactual history of England’s Euro 2025 to be written in which Kelly does not post her astonishing social media tirade against Manchester City at the end of January. In which she does not get the move to Arsenal that rescues her career, does not win back her England place, does not rescue the quarter-final against Sweden or score the winning goal against Italy. And – quite frankly – it is a history in which England’s players are watching Sunday’s final from their sofas.
Frozen out by Gareth Taylor at Manchester City, out of contract in the summer, handed one league start all season, Kelly was ready to walk away from the game. City were prepared to let her go on loan to Brighton. Kelly wanted to join Manchester United. City were unwilling to lose her to a rival. Result: deadlock. And with just hours remaining of the January transfer window, a deadlock Kelly realised she was going to have to break herself.
“While I can’t control someone’s negative behaviour towards me, I can control how long I am prepared to tolerate it,” Kelly wrote in an Instagram post very clearly self-penned. “To be dictated whom I can and can’t join with only four months left of the football season is having a huge impact on not only my career but my mental wellbeing. Our dreams can be crushed while we live in silence.”
Kelly’s outspokenness was immediately rewarded with a last-gasp move to Arsenal. And yet to burn her bridges with City so publicly was a decision fraught with risk, but also a measure of her need to dictate terms rather than have them dictated to her, to act rather than let things drift, to determine her own fate. After the Italy game, someone asked Kelly who had made her the person she is today. “Myself,” she answered.
Chloe Kelly scored England’s winner against Germany in the Euro 2022 final at Wembley. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA
But of course this will surprise nobody familiar with Kelly’s game. Aged 20, she stunned Arsenal by leaving permanently for Everton, walking out on her first club and her home town in search of first-team football. In her first full season at Everton she played through an ankle injury as the club languished near the bottom of the WSL. It was, as she would later admit, “selfish because I should have let someone else play who was 100%. But unselfish because I needed to help the team.”
It was telling, too, that when she was dropped by Sarina Wiegman for the February internationals, she told the media she would “fight to get my shirt back”. Not the shirt. My shirt. And even if Wiegman’s decision was quickly reversed after an injury to Beth Mead, there was a brutal clarity there, a simple task with a simple outcome. Problem: you’re not playing enough. Solution: start playing more. Bonus solution: win Champions League.
Of course, before Sunday’s final there will be significant pressure on Wiegman to find a place for Kelly – and her revelatory Arsenal teammate Michelle Agyemang – in the starting XI. “Don’t fix what isn’t broken, it’s working,” the former Lioness Rachel Daly said on her podcast on Wednesday, a statement that raised the question: is it really working? But Daly did also make a good point about the value of players who can change a game late on, when legs are tiring and the stakes are at their terrifying highest.
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And perhaps Kelly’s particular skills – pinpoint crosses into the area, quick feet, dead-ball deliveries, a burst of pace, a powerful shot, the ability to ride challenges – are particularly suited to the later stages of games. She grew up playing in the five-a-side cages of west London, a true street footballer. “She seems to thrive on those moments when the team needs her,” Morgan says.
They call themselves the “finishers”, the “positive clique”, complete with finger-clicking celebration and even their own WhatsApp group.
And whatever situation England find themselves in on Sunday, they will need Kelly, just as they will need Agyemang, Aggie Beever-Jones, Grace Clinton. It is why Wiegman spends so much time working with the fringe players, why the starters often make a point of staying out after training to support them while they do their extra fitness work.
At the start of this year, you would have got pretty long odds on Kelly playing a starring role this summer. But of course Kelly has previous here too.
Three years ago she missed almost an entire season with a cruciate ligament injury, and didn’t take the field again until April. We all know how that summer ended. Kelly knows better than most than it’s not how you start. It’s how you finish.