KELLY SMITH
1996- 97, 2005- 09, 2012- 17 GAMES 144 CLUB ARSENAL
BEFORE Arsenal Women were set up in 1987 – then as Arsenal Ladies – in an environment unrecognisable to today’s. Women’s football was amateur, and although Arsenal were the standout force, they weren’t yet established as the giants they would become.
LEGACY When Smith was seven, parents of other children in her school team complained that she shouldn’t be permitted to play with them. She was too good for everybody – and she was playing in a boys’ team.
Opportunities weren’t exactly fruitful after Smith’s expulsion, either. “Women’s football in England is a joke,” she stated when leaving Arsenal for America at 18. Little did she know, she was to define the sport for young girls in England upon her return.
Smith rejoined the Gunners in 2005. In her time away, she had become England’s first female professional footballer and even been name- checked in Bend It Like Beckham, a film essentially reflecting what she had achieved in leaving a leafy suburb for stateside soccer.
She impressed at the Philadelphia Charge, but headed back to Blighty after injuries and alcohol addiction somewhat ruined her spell at the New Jersey Wildcats. Linking up with legendary manager Vic Akers represented a chance she never received as a teenager: this was the moment to create a footballing dynasty in the women’s game. “It was our job to move women’s football further,” said Smith of her homecoming.
The squad was packed with leaders, and in Smith’s first season back she scored the goal which clinched the title against Charlton. The Gunners defended their trophy the following year, and the chasing pack couldn’t catch up.
The 2006- 07 season proved to be Smith’s defining campaign – for good and bad. Thirty goals in 34 league appearances helped crown Arsenal as unbeaten champions, with their No. 10 rightfully hailed as the best in women’s football. Comparisons to David Beckham were flattering yet hollow – Smith was producing numbers that Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi were just starting to in the men’s game.
Arsenal’s prolific forward wasn’t particularly comfortable with the spotlight anyway: shy and introverted, her battle with alcoholism “was down to feeling really insecure within myself,” she revealed in 2017.
In the last four of the 2007 UEFA Women’s Cup – later called the Women’s Champions League – Smith retaliated after a bad tackle, earned a second yellow card and took her frustration out on opposition fans in the form of a V- sign, before larruping a chair. She was banned for the two- legged final: to date, the only time that a female English side has won a European trophy.
“I didn’t always feel like I received proper protection from referees, so I often took the law into my own hands,” she remembered. “I was disappointed in myself, but I did feel I played a major part in getting to the final.”
That was one of few blips in an otherwise faultless career. Smith retired as England’s greatest player to plaudits around the world – something she could never have imagined when she first left home for greener pastures.
“She was ahead of her time,” broadcaster Jacqui Oatley explained of Smith. “Not just in terms of her obvious talent, but also because the game was really in its infancy when she came through. She played a massive role in getting people to recognise women’s football as being entertainment.”
BEST MOMENT Aged 37, Smith dictated the midfield to perfection during the 2016 FA Cup Final. It was a sublime display a million miles from the all- action, goal- getting Smith of the 2000s – but iconic, nonetheless.