Chloe Kelly: Ealing’s Lioness

Wembley Stadium, 31 July 2022. It’s all level in the Euros final as England and Germany have one goal apiece.

England’s Lionesses take a corner with ten minutes left of extra time. And it’s the substitute Chloe Kelly who, stretching across the keeper, toes the ball into the back of the net. England win their first major football tournament since 1966.

For Kelly, victory at Wembley was a victory on home turf. She grew up a bus ride away from the stadium in Ealing.

She’s now based up in Manchester scoring goals for Manchester City. But Kelly cites her football journey as starting right here – on the streets and in the enclosed pitches of her west London home. She was named Time Out’s Londoner of the Year in 2022.

Kelly grew up playing football with her five older brothers at the cage on Southall’s Windmill Park Estate, one of the many enclosed pitches you’d find across the city. The physicality and non-stop intensity of cage football shaped Kelly’s playing style: fast, agile, strong on the ball.

“The creative side to my football I get from the cages,” she reflected in an interview with England Football. “Even the physical side because you get bounced off the cage and you have to get back up and go again.”

Born and raised a Queen’s Park Rangers fan, Kelly’s journey to professional football began at her beloved Shepherd’s Bush-based club. She joined their training and development programmes aged eight.

She then moved from west to north London and joined Arsenal FC’s Centre of Excellence. She’d spend an hour travelling by train each way. “But that was the sacrifice I had to make,” she told BBC Sport. “I'd get home at about 10.30-11pm and go back to school the next day!"

Aged 17, Kelly made her debut for Arsenal’s first team in a cup match against Watford – and scored her first goal only 22 minutes in. She signed her first professional contract with the club a year later. But she spent the next couple of years either struggling to cement her spot in the first team, or out on loan at Liverpool-based club Everton.

Kelly made the move to Everton permanent in 2018, scoring 14 goals over the next three seasons. She was also part of the England under-20s squad that won bronze at the World Cup that year.

In 2020, Kelly joined the Women’s Super League title contenders Manchester City and made an immediate impact as the club’s joint top goalscorer in her debut season.

But in 2021, a serious injury to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her knee led to a long 11-month recovery period off the pitch. She had to relearn how to walk. And she missed out being in the England squad at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which was delayed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was an isolating experience at times. “The hardest part of it was the mental side,” she said in an interview with Manchester City. “It feels like you don’t have any worth, not playing your sport or being able to do your job… and that was difficult for me.”

Kelly celebrating her goal at Wembley – sprinting across the pitch, waving her shirt above her head – became the iconic image of the Lionesses’ 2022 Euros campaign.

She’d only played her first game back in an England shirt after her injury the month before. The Lionesses and coach Serena Wiegman were each awarded the Freedom of the City of London, an honour recognising their outstanding achievement in the competition.

She continues to be a firm fixture of the Lioness squad. In the 2023 World Cup, Kelly resumed her Euros role as a ‘super sub’, often coming off the substitute bench to provide fresh legs and fiery energy to the game. Her penalty against Nigeria in the round-of-16 shootout was almost 111km/h – more powerful than any strike of the 2022/2023 Premier League campaign.