ACCOLADES WERE SUDDENLY coming my way thick and fast, both inside and outside the world of football.
One morning I was sat at home watching Sky Sports News when the nominees for the men’s and women’s FIFA World Player of the Year came up on the bottom of the screen. My name flashed in front of me and then it was gone. So I waited for it to scroll around again and, sure enough, there it was. It was quite exciting to find out in this way. I was listed in the top five women’s footballers in the world. Things were just getting better and better for me.
I was a little shocked at the thought of it all, to be honest. It is quite an achievement at the end of the day. But I was totally ecstatic to have been recognized in this way. It was another proud moment for me.
I am also proud to see how women’s football has grown so much over the past few years and is now so widely accepted in the sport as a whole. The last ten years have seen a massive change. The fact that the women’s World Player of the Year stands beside the men’s World Player of the Year is a massive watermark in terms of recognition for us. The result of this is that we all get to go along to the awards gala in Zurich. And it’s not just the nominees who attend. Iconic names from the past are there too, such as Pelé.
My dad and I actually shared a car with Pelé. It’s a funny story. We boarded the same plane as him from London Heathrow to Zurich. It was an early flight. My dad saw him first, as he got on the plane. When we were getting seated, Dad said to me, ‘Kelly, you’re not going to believe who’s on this plane.’
I was like, ‘Who? Tell me?’
‘Pelé,’ he said.
‘Pelé?’ I then said it even louder: ‘Pelé?’ I couldn’t believe it.
But he was there on the plane, sitting about five seats behind us. It then dawned on us that he was probably going to the World Player of the Year awards as well.
It was such a thrill for me to be sharing a plane with Pelé. So imagine my excitement when I got to share a limousine with him. As we approached Zurich airport we were told that there would be a special car service to take us to the check-in terminal. We were to be taken to the front of the line of passengers at passport control. We would then collect our luggage before taking another organized car to the hotel that was hosting the gala. So, after landing, we were ushered down some stairs and straight into the limousine that was waiting for us. Dad and I were just sitting in it when suddenly Pelé and this other guy got in and joined us.
This was now totally unbelievable. I am sitting there, my dad is sitting alongside me, and Pelé is sitting directly in front of me. It was crazy. We had a little conversation with him and his friend. Not too much, but enough.
Dad was desperate to get his autograph. He really wanted to ask him, but he couldn’t bring himself to in those circumstances. He feared that it would be a bit cheesy. It all happened so quickly, and the moment was then gone. Dad never did get his autograph, which is a shame because Pelé is one of his footballing idols. Still, it was an amazing experience for us both.
Once I was at the hotel, I was told how the day would run by my personal guide. We were given a tour of FIFA headquarters – we saw the World Cup and all sorts. Every FIFA tournament trophy was on show. We were also given a tour of the city, which is pretty.
The hotel room we stayed in was amazing. It had remote control blinds – I hadn’t seen those before. There was a massive bathtub in there too. Dad shared my room and he hadn’t experienced anything like it either. It was a top five-star hotel. The Liverpool (as he was then) and Spain striker Fernando Torres was in the next room to ours. I didn’t recognize him at first. My dad had to tell me that we had just walked past him in the corridor. I should walk around with my eyes open a little bit more.
When I got to my seat, I found that Torres was sat next to me. We were both on the front row – with all the other World Player of the Year nominees. So it was obviously not that much of a coincidence that our rooms were next to each other’s, right? I had a conversation with him and I remember saying to him that he should win the award in the future if he carried on playing like he was. He was absolutely brilliant that season. Funnily enough, a year or so later a friend pointed out to me that those comments I’d made were in his book. He had remembered what I said to him and included it in his book.
I also met Cristiano Ronaldo. He was there with his entourage in tow. Kaká, Lionel Messi and Steven Gerrard were there too. Big, big names from the world of football. It was such a great occasion because all around us there were so many high-profile players and stars. I met up with Germany captain Birgit Prinz when I got downstairs before the actual awards ceremony and we both did some interviews and had some pictures taken. Marta was there too. She deservedly won the women’s award. I came third. Messi won the men’s award.
At one point I had to get up and go on stage and speak, answering questions put to me by a FIFA official. It didn’t last long. They showed some clips of me, asked some questions and that was it, I sat down again.
The following year I was shortlisted again. And Marta won again. Xavi was there this time, and John Terry too. I spoke to him briefly after the event and he told me that he was heading back to London on his private jet! The late England manager Bobby Robson was given a posthumous award that year and his wife came to Zurich to accept it. She gave a really nice speech. She was lovely.
It was all so hard to take in for someone like me. You do take it in your stride to a degree, but sometimes I have to pinch myself, especially when I look back to how things were when I was at school, and of course everything I had to go through to get to awards ceremonies like these. These players were the elite men and women in our sport. You couldn’t go any higher if you tried.
Take someone like Marta. In the USA, I wouldn’t be too far behind Marta in the recognition stakes, but there would be a gap. She is renowned as the best player in the world these days. I would say she is now a global star; she’s the biggest name in women’s football by far. She can’t go anywhere in Brazil. She won the World Player of the Year award five years in a row, from 2006 to 2010, so that’s understandable. And rightly so. She is a supreme talent. The technical abilities she possesses are very rarely seen in a woman. I can’t recall ever seeing the like in another woman. Not in the same way. She is exceptional. Being Brazilian obviously helps to achieve that level. She is very much on her own in the women’s game.
I played alongside Marta in Atlanta once. It was in an All Star match between Marta’s XI and Abby Wambach’s XI. Players, coaches and fans voted for which players were selected.
Marta picked her team with FC Gold Pride coach Albertin Montoya and Abby picked her team with Philadelphia Independence coach Paul Riley. Abby went mainly for USA players while Marta went international in her picks. It was like choosing players from the playground. We had the likes of Sonia Bompastor of France, Aya Miyama of Japan and Christine Sinclair of Canada in our side.
It was good to be involved in something fun and different and we all wanted to win! Who plays a game and doesn’t want to win? Not me. I set up Marta for the first goal in the seventh minute and then she did one of her mazy runs two minutes later to make it 2–0. The match ended 5–2 to us. I really enjoyed myself. It was great to play alongside such talent in a one-off game.
From the mid to late 2000s, it always seemed to be Marta, Prinz and me vying for these top awards. Another Brazilian ace, Cristiane, was always in the mix too. In a sense I have been unfortunate to be up against such excellent players. But coming third behind the likes of Marta and Prinz is no disgrace. It has actually been a great honour for me to play at the same time as them. We all vied for that top spot for four or five years in a row. We are all different types of players too, with different talents. So that’s good for the game.
Prinz was just so big, strong and powerful. Her statistics speak for themselves at international level – 128 goals in 214 appearances. When you have that strength element in your game and you also have good players around you – as she did with both FFC Frankfurt and Germany – you can put your technique and finishing qualities to the fore. She had those in bundles, and that set her apart from everybody else. She also worked so hard for her team. She was a strong leader too, and a very good captain. Germany ruled the game when she was at her peak.
Players relished the chance of playing against her because she was the best centre-forward in the women’s game for a number of years, the biggest test of all. My Arsenal and England team-mate Faye White would always have the bit between her teeth when she played against her. She would be out there trying to stop her and trying to prove a point by stopping her. She did that so well in that famous 0–0 draw we got against Germany in the 2007 Women’s World Cup.
But Prinz had this aura about her. She knew she was the best at what she did and she was very much a confident player because of that.
Marta is the flair player in women’s football. In terms of the stuff she can do with a ball, she has no peer. Not many female footballers can do anything like what she can do. As a player you can try and emulate it, of course, but I think it is such a natural gift to her; she is so tuned into it. She has obviously worked at her game – we all have to do that – but it seems to me that what she does comes very easily to her. I’m a bit like her in that sense. What I do comes easily to me.
You are born with that sort of talent. I genuinely believe that. It is, as I said, a natural gift. Sure we all have to work a little bit in certain situations, but when you possess the sort of composure and vision the top players have you are really playing the game at another level. There’s a higher comfort factor on the ball. You are always aware of other players coming in and the space that is around you, and you always fancy yourself in those situations. I don’t think you can actually teach that. It has to be an instinct that you have within yourself. The more you play the game, the more you can fine-tune that talent. But I don’t think you can teach it to players who don’t have it, not to the same level those who are born with it enjoy – the few lucky ones. You can’t buy being born a Brazilian, either!
Together with my England caps and my MBE, the World Player of the Year nominations are the proudest achievements in my career. These personal accolades are now getting to a level I could never have imagined when I was a young girl. Playing for my country was a dream. But meeting the Queen and mixing with the best male footballers in the world – past and present, on an equal footing – were never in my wildest thoughts.
In terms of women’s football, being talked about in the same breath as players such as Marta and Prinz is the bar I always aimed to reach. And that is a great achievement in itself. But meeting the Queen, the monarch of our country, our leader, is something else. It doesn’t get much more special than standing there face to face with her as she pins to your chest an award in recognition of your services to a game you have loved all your life.
My past will always help to put everything into perspective for me, because I had to work so hard to achieve these things, off the field as well as on the field. All my rehabilitation work, getting myself into a better frame of mind and into better shape, staying fit and healthy so as to allow myself to reach for those goals again, the goals I always believed deep in my heart one day I could achieve. The goals that looked for a long time to be lost. I always had this vision of being one of the best players in the world – and now here I was, posing for pictures at a FIFA gala.
I strived to be number one in the world and to be one day recognized as the best women’s player in the world. That didn’t happen. But I came as close as I could to it. I mean, I was pipped to the post by two of the greatest women’s players that will ever live. No other player from England has come as close as I did.
To be frank for a moment, it is just so bloody pleasing for me to be able to say all this after all the shit I have been through. Despite all the obstacles I managed to prove to myself, and to others, that I could reach the levels I always believed I could reach.
After all my trials and tribulations – with boys’ teams when I was a schoolgirl, loneliness when I was in America, and a horrible rollercoaster of injuries, depression and alcoholism – I had managed to get to where I wanted to be. It had been a hell of a journey, but I was now definitely living the life of a footballer.