Three summers ago, she provided an image for the ages, racing across the Wembley turf, twirling her shirt euphorically above her head in a moment of indelible beauty, and we thought there could be nothing so iconic again. We were wrong.
As the sun began to set across this stadium last night, Chloe Kelly stepped up to the penalty spot with a look of absolute certainty on her face. She span the football through her hands fully five times, calmly waiting until she was entirely satisfied that it had settled on to a place where she was ready to strike it.
She adjusted the ponytail in which she holds her golden hair, prepared for her idiosyncratic skip up to the ball and, without the faintest flicker of self-doubt, dispatched the penalty kick which retained the European Championship title for England.
Her delirious run to the corner flag was just like the one we saw after her strike from spot which rescued England in a quarter final barely a week ago. She, the 27-year-old shining light of this England team, had not even started the match. Has there been a better, more consistently willing and influential substitute in England women’s or men’s tournament squads down the years than this player? Almost certainly not.
Though Aitana Bonmati was named player of the tournament last night, Kelly was an extremely very strong candidate. A player whose story and example speaks of winning out in the face of struggle and sadness.
Frozen out at Manchester City, she was at risk of dropping out of Sarina Wiegman’s England squad had a loan move to Arsenal not worked out. She began to play with joy again in North London. It was the joyous Kelly who shone out last night.
From the very start, there were hints that England were ready to seize this night and make some history.
Early on, there was their direct football: balls out of their own half asking Lauren Hemp to drive down the Spain right and find Alessia Russo, whose low effort was parried away into the path of Lauren James, who lost her footing. Here was the kind of quality which we had barely seen from them in this past month.
Spain put that move together because James, a player who was clearly unfit and should not have started this game, was asleep in the build-up, drifting aimlessly around the theatre of danger that Spain attacked. Bronze was left standing with her hands on her head because she had lacked awareness.
You feared for England then, because when the momentum shift came, it was brutally hard for a group of players who found themselves stuck on that notorious Spanish passing carousel.
Spain’s was a counterpressure so good that England were gasping for air, unable to get out, needing to fasten onto the ball simply to get a rest but not even managing that.
They didn’t press the Spanish hard, employing a game plan which entailed deep and stating compact, rather than advancing to close down the centre backs as Spain advanced.
But Spain hadn’t accounted for what Sarina Wiegman’s players have been calling ‘proper England’ at this tournament.
It was a more aggressive side which emerged for the second half – a team unwilling to be strangled into submission – and Kelly, who had replaced James in the first half’s closing stages was the driving force from the start, floating an exquisite cross which Russo rose to meet and equalise.
One of the footballing developments of this tournament has been a quality of crossing surpassing that of any other women’s international tournament and Kelly has provided more – 10 of them – than any substitute in a tournament since a record was first taken, in 2011.
Soon, she was driving into the box, shifting the ball from her left foot to right and getting away a shot which Coll got fingertips to, to push it wide.
When the dust settles today, there will be a monumental English defensive performance to celebrate, too. From Hannah Hampton, of course, whose two huge saves in the shoot-out delivered Kelly her opportunity and England their trophy.
From Jess Carter, restored to the side at the end of a tournament which has challenged her in so many ways. From Leah Williamson, England’s outstanding player on the night. From Lucy Bronze, who revealed last night that she’d played the entire whole tournament with a fractured tibia
The jeopardy was immense. Time stood still as substitute Claudia Pina ran into left hand of England’s box and shot, but Hampton hurled herself into an instinctive save, parrying the ball away. This contest, between two world class sides, fighting it out to the last, no quarter given, took us to another shootout of unbearable tension.
When Beth Mead slipped as she took her first kick, substitute Michelle Agyemang’s hands in the circle went up to her head, and the striker, forced to retake as it had been a ‘double touch’, missed, allowing Patri the kick which gave Spain first advantage.
England’s kicks were a vast improvement on the wretched shootout against the Swedes. Alex Greenwood’s was solid and Niamh Charles’ emphatic. It took a save to the highest order to parry Leah Williamson’s strike, sent low and right of the keeper.
But after Hampton’s two saves and Paralluelo’s wild strike wide of the right post, it all came down to Kelly, the player of this England era, for whom that starring role in that Wembley final was never going to be enough.
