Chloe Kelly walks up to the penalty spot as if she’s in her back garden. She stops. She pauses. She picks the ball up and spins it back onto the spot, as if no one is watching or waiting for the kick to keep England’s Euro defence alive, after three successive misses. So Kelly waits a little longer. She spins the ball back onto the spot three more times.
Kelly actually needs to pee. Some England players on the halfway line have lost track of the score as Kelly steps back. She locks eyes with goalkeeper Jennifer Falk and can’t help herself from grinning due to the sheer enormity of the moment. But Kelly sticks with what she knows: she lifts her left leg, skips a little, and, with her right foot, effortlessly places the biggest penalty of her life into the corner. Confident? That doesn’t quite cut it. “She was getting a lot of momentum, the goalkeeper,” Kelly said afterwards.
