She has said her brothers and their friends used to 'smash into her in tackles' and she has credited her career to those times. She grew up playing with her five brothers in the football cages in her area or just on the street, between the speed bumps in the road. Kelly, 24, began playing football in Ealing in west London, where she was born the youngest of seven siblings. That was meant to be the moment where her journey in football peaked. She missed the Olympics and could not even watch her Great Britain team-mates out in Tokyo, such was her misery at being left behind. But, as is so often the case with this type of injury, so prevalent in the women's game, it came when she was in her swash-buckling prime in early May. She had scored 10 goals for Manchester City on the wing in the Women's Super League and was a shoe-in to make Great Britain's Olympic team. It just shows an ACL does not define a player’s career, so if there’s a young girl out there going through an ACL journey, it is tough, but you see the benefits of all the hard work.'Īt the tail-end of the 2020/21 season she was flying. 'This moment wouldn’t have happened without them. 'This whole year it’s been tough but throughout it I never gave up, I kept fighting I kept pushing, and I’m grateful for everyone throughout who helped me,' she said. It was telling that immediately after the full-time whistle blew, she thanked those who had helped her through rehab first.

I didn’t think about it or plan anything. 'I just went mental, I didn't know what to do,' she said. As she flung her top off, and swung it around in jubilation, the last 13 months on the scrapheap for England melted away and she finally got her moment of magic at Wembley. The celebration though will remain in the memory. But it summed up how she savoured every brief moment she was allotted on the pitch at this tournament, because she had fought so hard to get here at all. It was an opportunistic lunge after she had already hacked at the air in her desperation to stick the ball in the back of the net. Last night, she became an overnight icon when her winner secured England's first ever major trophy in women's football.

The Manchester City winger has become an overnight icon with her winner securing England women's first major trophyĪ year ago, Chloe Kelly was at Wembley as a fan at the men's Euros, still recovering from an anterior cruciate ligament tear in her right knee. How Chloe Kelly fought back from serious knee injury to seal place in English football history

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