The European Football Championship starts on Wednesday, July 6, with the match between England and Austria at 22:00. The live broadcast of the match starts on TV2, Areena, the app and on the Urheilu website at 21:00.
Fran Kirby should have been an obvious choice for England’s EC tournament team. And the attacker didn’t have to be a line player, but one of the most important pieces of the group.
The misfortune made participation uncertain for a long time. Even during the announcement of the English team, there was no clarity on whether the Chelsea star would dare to join.
The exciting moments summed up the rollercoaster that Kirby has had to go through during his career. Life has been a flurry of extremes over the years. Under normal circumstances, he is a superstar and one of the most dangerous players on the football field, counterbalanced by a victim of hard setbacks.
Home games are a clear highlight of a football career that has already ended once and has been close to ending many times later. The journey has been amazingly exhausting considering that it was only 29 years ago last month.
It is England’s luck that Kirby is able to pull on the national team shirt. In seven years, he has scored a whopping 54 goals for Chelsea in 85 matches. Before that, he played 42 competitive matches in a Reading shirt with a rate of over 1.6 goals per match.
The selection divided opinions, because at the same time top players were dropped from the team. However, that tells you how much Kirby was wanted in. The head coach Sarina Wiegman felt that Kirby, if anyone, is worth the risk.
– I told him that I want him to be honest. If he doesn’t think I’m ready, I want to hear it. I wouldn’t want to be on the team if I didn’t feel like I could give it something, Kirby said when the team was announced.
Four months before the European Championships, Kirby had to put his career on hold after being sidelined for both Chelsea and England activities. The strange sensations caused the alarm bells to ring and when prolonged, forced a hard decision. There was no cure for the constant physical exhaustion, although Kirby even got an oxygen tent for his home.
By the time it got to that point, the symptoms had already been there for months. At the time of his absence, Kirby did not know how long the flute would become. Estimates ranged from weeks to months or even final.
Help was sought from the club’s doctors, private clinics, specialists, in England and abroad. Recovery, rest and diet were the exact reasons, but in vain. The psychologists discussed the possible impact of problems stemming from mental health. Athletes from different sports, on the other hand, gave their support and their own tips for navigating a similar situation.
Something had been wrong for several years and life was getting too heavy. In the end, the situation got easier – by waiting. Increasing the load one step at a time made it possible to return to the England camp in May, about three months after the previous match.
– It really opened my eyes to the fact that if you talk openly about your own difficulties, there are others in the same situation who can help with them, Kirby said according to the BBC (you’re switching to another service).
From a historic move to a successful streak
When playing, Kirby has always been phenomenal. Chelsea coach Emma Hayes has described him as the most talented attacking player in the England team. Speed, athleticism, range of kicks and game intelligence enabling inventive passing and finishing angles have resulted in numerous selections as the best player in the English Premier League.
Kirby is Chelsea Women’s all-time leading goalscorer, whose move to London was something of a breakthrough in women’s football. The striker, who dominated the Reading team, made his way to the blue shirts in the summer of 2015 with a transfer fee of just under 70,000 pounds.
Already at Reading, Kirby had been in a special position as the club’s only full-time female player. In addition to playing and training with his own team, he trained with boys’ teams and coached girls’ teams. The player who wore the club’s colors since she was a little girl was still able to do Reading one last favor when she left, because at that time it was the most expensive transfer of a female player in England.
On top of that, Kirby’s agent at the time said later that Arsenal and Manchester City would have been willing to pay up to three times the amount in a bidding war between giant clubs. However, Kirby himself wanted to go to London to get under the coach he wanted.
Over the course of seven seasons, Kirby, despite his repeated personal setbacks, has played a central role in Chelsea’s rise to an increasingly high-quality club.
The first championship came right away in 2015, even though Kirby only had time to participate for half a season. Now there are already a handful of league championships. In the Champions League, Chelsea was a finalist last year. Kirby, on the other hand, has been scoring goals off the conveyor belt, either as a finisher or a starter. At his peak in the 2020-2021 season, he scored 16 hits in 18 league games.
– He has been crucially important in the story of this team. His insatiable drive for perfection and victory keeps him wanting more – and not just more, but better, Coach Hayes said according to Goal (you will switch to another service).
The unfortunate thing about Kirby is that his career has been characterized by being left out of the lineup. The love for the sport has been put to the test, because getting up from the bottom has required a lot of resources each time.
Kirby had his darkest time in 2010 when he quit football as a 17-year-old pledge. Then there were family reasons in the background, when the tragedy experienced three years earlier hit the eyes after years of persistence and pushing forward.
Kirby’s mother had died of a cerebral hemorrhage when Kirby was 14 years old. Kirby later described himself as being old enough to understand what had happened, but too old to properly process it. The flame went out in one fell swoop in the middle of the England girls’ national team camp, when Kirby felt the sudden need to go home. The soccer career enabled by his mother was no longer to his liking and after a moment of reflection, Kirby announced to his team that he was leaving the team altogether.
The return happened reluctantly and by chance. Kirby agreed to go with his friend’s football team, because participating did not require training, warm-up or any other commitments besides the matches themselves. Soon Reading were short of players and Kirby was lured back in, first as a temporary substitute.
– I really enjoyed it. My friends were on the team and I loved the atmosphere. Soon I started playing regularly again. Before long, I had scored 32 goals in 21 matches for the national team. Then, in 2014, I was Reading’s first female player to sign a professional contract, Kirby told Players’ Tribune (You’re moving to another service).
Perhaps the hardships at that time were what made Kirby the player he is today. Kirby saw how in the midst of hardship you can still get back to your level and develop even better. Understanding has become necessary in the whirlwinds of subsequent challenges.
In 2016, in a match against Liverpool, Kirby was the victim of a knee-jerk tackle, but continued to play. Week by week, however, the pain got worse, until two months later in the imaging examinations, a bone tumor was detected, or more commonly known as a painful bruise. It doesn’t require surgery, but it does take an incalculable amount of time—and Kirby certainly didn’t guess how much.
After three MRIs, a fracture was also found in the leg. Instead of a few weeks of peaceful rehabilitation, there was an absence of almost a year. What followed was a fleeting moment of happiness when Kirby returned to play. Kirby then fell to the surface of the court in a bad position and returned to the treatment table with a torn ankle ligament.
Modest numbers of games dropped Kirby from the charts again for a long time. Once again, however, he proved that he can return to his level as soon as the conditions allow it. Chelsea enjoyed their best streak and Kirby started scoring goals both for the club and the national team.
The bubble burst – again and again
The best years of his career were finally the football dream Kirby had always wanted to live. Everyday was full of futs bubble, because outside of training he also lived with two of his teammates. The trio was also together in November 2019, when a joint dinner at home took an unexpected turn.
– I felt really bad chest pains. A bit like indigestion, but a hundred times worse. I couldn’t figure out what it was. I held onto the table with both hands, Kirby recalled to ESPN (you’re moving to another service).
The flashbacks are tricky because at some point Kirby lost consciousness. After a while, the same thing happened again. Fortunately for the top athlete, who normally participated in training during the day, the situation did not get any worse when the ambulance arrived.
This time, the tests revealed pericarditis, the prognosis for recovery varied from a couple of weeks to even a year. Kirby returned to training after two weeks off, but everything still didn’t seem right.
– I felt constant chest pain and could only climb the stairs twice a day. I called the club doctor on Christmas Day. I didn’t feel any better and I remember calling him in tears. He tried to celebrate with his family but I felt helpless. “I just remember asking what can I do because nothing is going to help,” Kirby told ESPN.
In the end, everyone else’s world came to a standstill with the coronavirus. For Kirby, it was lucky in its own way. It was necessary to calm down, and there was no rush to return to training or games when all football activities stopped.
It wasn’t until last summer that Kirby was able to increase the strain again and feel normal again. As we now know, that was also temporary and the spring season became a challenge with the European Championships on the horizon.
Considering that, Kirby’s presence in the tournament is almost a miracle. Unfortunately, he is already too used to that feeling.
– I don’t think about what’s coming anymore. I’m just wondering what’s going on right now. I’ve learned not to get too excited because everything changes as soon as something goes wrong. I approach everything with reservations. You just have to go with the flow, Kirby said, according to ESPN.