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Footballer: My Story
The inspiring story of how a girl from Watford became the greatest player in England's history and one of the biggest stars in world football.
All Kelly Smith ever wanted to be was a footballer. Blessed with brilliant talent which she honed with hours of practice, it was soon clear to all who saw her that Kelly was the best women's footballer that England had ever produced. Yet for this shy girl from Watford, it would be a long and difficult journey to the pinnacle of the world game, and one which would involve the hardest of challenges.
After starting drinking to mask her loneliness thousands of miles from home at college in the United States, a series of career-threatening injuries led to severe depression and a battle with alcoholism. But with the fighting spirit that was so essential on her path to be Britain's first women's professional player, Kelly bounced back to inspire Arsenal to countless trophies and become England's record goalscorer.
My Story is the inspirational tale of a woman with a drive to succeed despite all the obstacles thrown in her way. It is the unique inside story of a star in a sport enjoyed by millions yet often not granted the recognition it deserves. And as she nears the end of a glittering playing career, it is the story of how Kelly Smith became what she always wanted to be. A professional footballer, in a professional league.
All Kelly Smith ever wanted to be was a footballer. Blessed with brilliant talent which she honed with hours of practice, it was soon clear to all who saw her that Kelly was the best women's footballer that England had ever produced. Yet for this shy girl from Watford, it would be a long and difficult journey to the pinnacle of the world game, and one which would involve the hardest of challenges.
After starting drinking to mask her loneliness thousands of miles from home at college in the United States, a series of career-threatening injuries led to severe depression and a battle with alcoholism. But with the fighting spirit that was so essential on her path to be Britain's first women's professional player, Kelly bounced back to inspire Arsenal to countless trophies and become England's record goalscorer.
My Story is the inspirational tale of a woman with a drive to succeed despite all the obstacles thrown in her way. It is the unique inside story of a star in a sport enjoyed by millions yet often not granted the recognition it deserves. And as she nears the end of a glittering playing career, it is the story of how Kelly Smith became what she always wanted to be. A professional footballer, in a professional league.
320 pages, Paperback
First published July 19, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 16, 2024
As much as I like Kelly Smith, and soccer, and autobiographies, I must confess that this book was a little bit of a disappointment.
It's really two books in one. The first half is an addiction memoir, where Kelly Smith bravely and honestly tells a warts-and-all story about realizing she had a drinking problem and then turning it around. The second half of the book is really more of a biography of the English Women's Soccer Team. Chapters follow in crushing detail seemingly every game England played over the course of about 10 years. We get exhaustive chronology of the team (..."and then, in April 2006, I scored in the first half of a game against Hungary..."), but frustratingly little about what her teammates are like, what went on off the field, or really anything juicy or personal about herself or anyone once she went into rehab. Not that I expected a tell-all expose of the world of women's soccer, but I was hoping for something a little more colorful.
Still, the story of Smith's overcoming addiction and numerous injuries is inspiring. Just don't get your hopes up for insights into relationships, team chemistry, or indeed anything not directly related to soccer or drinking.
It's really two books in one. The first half is an addiction memoir, where Kelly Smith bravely and honestly tells a warts-and-all story about realizing she had a drinking problem and then turning it around. The second half of the book is really more of a biography of the English Women's Soccer Team. Chapters follow in crushing detail seemingly every game England played over the course of about 10 years. We get exhaustive chronology of the team (..."and then, in April 2006, I scored in the first half of a game against Hungary..."), but frustratingly little about what her teammates are like, what went on off the field, or really anything juicy or personal about herself or anyone once she went into rehab. Not that I expected a tell-all expose of the world of women's soccer, but I was hoping for something a little more colorful.
Still, the story of Smith's overcoming addiction and numerous injuries is inspiring. Just don't get your hopes up for insights into relationships, team chemistry, or indeed anything not directly related to soccer or drinking.
May 17, 2017
I'm a big fan of women's soccer: this autobiography got a fair amount of attention as it traces Smith's struggle with addiction. That side of it is moving. But this is an athlete's memoir through and through. It is written with a lot of attention to the game — it's so refreshing on that level. I wrote a longer review of it on my sports blog, and have reprinted that review here.
When you teach you learn pretty quickly that the very smartest and most interesting students are often quiet. Some are painfully shy and intense listeners. Some only talk when they think they have something valuable to contribute and have a very the bar high when it comes to their sense of value. Some feel like their own interests are so out of step with everyone else they just keep their mouths shut. Some keep their mouths shut because they don't want to stand out.
When you teach, you meet these students in their writing. It's one of the profession's real pleasures. These students teach me to never accept the surface. To expect deep waters, but also to never assume that I know where those deep waters lie.
Kelly Smith's memoir is the absolute opposite of Hope Solo's. Some of these differences can be chalked up to those of a keeper and a striker, and others can be read as the differences of American and English attitudes towards self-disclosure. (One is abundant with it, the other refuses it.) But the differences between their books don't end there.
Hope Solo barely touches on her game in her memoir. The book's focus is on her family, and on the challenging social dynamics of a team living under the spotlight. We know the name of her boyfriend and are given the outline of the development of their relationship. Her friends and the coaches who have supported her get shout-outs. We do get a peek into the USWNT run in the 2011 World Cup, and Solo outlines the physical struggle of her recovery from a shoulder injury that was far worse than most of us realized. But these things are not really at the heart of the narrative. A Memoir of Hope is personality driven. If Solo's memoir is a good read it is because it mirrors the outspoken wild card public persona we already know.
The title of Footballer: My Story pretty much says it all. Smith's book is 100% centered on her relationship to the sport. Where Solo's book opens with a broad portrait of her home town, her parents, with the landscape in which she grows up, Smith's book opens with an image of one of the world's greatest players as a kid with a ball at her feet. We learn that she would imitate moves that she saw on Match of the Day, and practice them using video tapes of the week's highlights. The narrative sticks with this tight focus of Smith on the ball right to the end.
Footballer: My Story does chronicle Smith's personal struggles, and they are significant:
When she grew up there was no real women's football culture to speak of in England. This is the source of her often cited complaint that the women's game in England in the 1990s "was a joke."
Like many of the great international players, she played with boys until she was kicked off the team. She grew up being welcomed into the game (invited to play with the boys) and exiled from it.
Like most international players, she had no future in the sport to imagine for herself - she wanted to be a professional footballer, but for English girls this dream was a delusion. The vast majority of English women players lose access to training before they turn 18. Even now the Women's Super League is more semi-pro than pro. And it is significantly more professional than anything anyone had ever heard of just ten years ago.
She was scouted and recruited to play in the US. This was dumb luck. With relatively little awareness of what it would mean, she enrolled at Seton Hall in New Jersey and plunged into deep culture shock.
She suffered from crippling social anxiety which she self-medicated, becoming a full-blown alcoholic in her twenties.
She suffered one serious injury after another. Torn ACL, broken leg, fractured leg - and has come back from each.
Unlike the USWNT, England has been a serious underdog in international competition for years. Under Hope Powell's leadership the team has been climbing a serious mountain. They've suffered some agonizing, cruel defeats on the world stage. When it comes to trophies and medals, they are far more familiar with failure than they are with success.
In short, Kelly Smith has worked hard, suffered, and gotten through it and over it. In spite of the list I've given above, the book is not a litany of complaints. Far from it. Smith is clearly a person with an enormous reservoir of strength. If she shares one quality with Solo, it is a certain stubbornness. A refusal to hear "no." An obstacle is not a roadblock. It's something to be hurdled.
Her narrative is also not sappy, or sentimental. It's remarkably reticent. We never learn, for example, why Smith was so afraid of speaking in front of people, or why she felt so intensely alone and isolated that she crawled up inside a bottle. This book is no confessional. On this point, it feels remarkably English - she makes absolutely no excuses for herself. Even as we learn of relationships that have sustained her, she never tells their story - Smith comes off as very private. This leaves her somewhat of a mystery as a person.
Smith's discretion compares interestingly with Solo's openness, as do her struggles with social anxiety. Solo is what the corporate world diagnoses as "non-joiner" - a person not so good at small talk, who prefers time alone to team-building exercises, prefers the company of a handful of people she trusts than that of people she doesn't know and who don't know her. Solo does not lack for confidence - in fact her confidence perhaps grounds her decisions about how she socializes. The Solo we meet in her memoir knows what she needs.
Footballer: My Story suggests a very different kind of isolation. Smith struggled with profound loneliness and depression. Real despair - and it seems that for a long time this was kept hidden from the people around her. Fortunately, it wasn't hidden for too long: Powell, her teammates and her family helped her get on solid ground. Where Solo and co-author Ann Killian give us detail about her background in order that we understand Solo's lone wolf, controversy-provoking style, Smith and her co-author Lance Hardy draw a careful line around Smith's private life.
The refusal to disclose much about herself off the pitch makes room in Smith's autobiography for lots of writing about her development as a player and a teammate. This book will teach readers a lot about the England women's team. It will also introduce readers to the basic state of European women's football. You'll also get a fantastic glimpse of Hope Powell's coaching, which is no small thing in and of itself. Smith devotes a full chapter to Powell - the whole book might just be a long thank you to the woman that Smith credits with saving not just her career, but her very soul.
The book starts of slowly and awkwardly - somehow its writing seems to mirror Smith's battles with social awkwardness, picking up pace as she gets deeper into her career and maturity. The book is most comfortable inside the game: the chapter on England's loss to France in the 2011 World Cup quarterfinals is as heart breaking as the match itself.
When you watch the game as much as some of us do, you really want to know what it feels like to play at that level. Sometimes it is a joyful experience and sometimes it is absolute physical and emotional agony. The game started off with a "bright start" but soon France put the pressure on them and then kept it up. Smith's team scored a goal against the run of play at 58 minutes. The French really piled it on then. "We knew we were in a match," Smith writes. Her ankle had been sore from the start, and the pain mounted with each passing minute.
France kept up their attack, dominating possession. England held on for dear life. Smith writes, "I couldn't see us getting a goal. So, without thinking about it, I started to will the game to end. I wanted penalties."
Penalties they got. Smith took the first and scored. But they went out anyway. This is the kind of story that fans want: How was Smith feeling in the middle of that firestorm? What happened with the penalties? (Few players volunteered, this because a major talking point in the press.) What happened with that substitution?
Many people wrote after that match that England's women are like the men - and that English players need to practice penalties more than they do. Smith's recollections and thoughts on this whole episode are frank and sobering:
Regarding the comparison with the men's side:
It's a good point. I appreciated hearing this from her. I also appreciated her account of watching the World Cup final with her teammates in Boston, and then what it felt like to see Breakers teammate Aya Sameshina return to the squad with the medal. ("I saw the medal but I couldn't touch it.")
It's hard to argue with her on that score. Smith's book gives us a glimpse of the difference that the England makes, as a context for developing the game. The system has strengths and weaknesses. Club training isn't as frequent and developed as it is in the US. But the FA is building its league system slowly and carefully. The FA had better luck with television contracts until recently. The national team's growth ties directly into the league's visibility. The book left me optimistic about women's football in England - and wondering how long it will be before it tops Sweden and Germany as the destination for the world's best.
There is, of course, a lot more to the book - and to Solo's - than I've been able to describe in these two posts. But of the two, Smith's will tell you a lot more about the experience of the match and the state of the game than will Solo's.
The tone of Smith's book suggests to me that if you sat next to Smith at a party, you could probably talk with her about the game for hours. She might be quiet at the start. She might not be the most gregarious person at the table, but once she gets rolling she can hold your attention just as well as she can hold the ball. Sorry for that last analogy, but I couldn't resist it. If you want to buy Footballer: My Story, you can find it on Amazon. And there's a kindle edition.
When you teach you learn pretty quickly that the very smartest and most interesting students are often quiet. Some are painfully shy and intense listeners. Some only talk when they think they have something valuable to contribute and have a very the bar high when it comes to their sense of value. Some feel like their own interests are so out of step with everyone else they just keep their mouths shut. Some keep their mouths shut because they don't want to stand out.
When you teach, you meet these students in their writing. It's one of the profession's real pleasures. These students teach me to never accept the surface. To expect deep waters, but also to never assume that I know where those deep waters lie.
Kelly Smith's memoir is the absolute opposite of Hope Solo's. Some of these differences can be chalked up to those of a keeper and a striker, and others can be read as the differences of American and English attitudes towards self-disclosure. (One is abundant with it, the other refuses it.) But the differences between their books don't end there.
Hope Solo barely touches on her game in her memoir. The book's focus is on her family, and on the challenging social dynamics of a team living under the spotlight. We know the name of her boyfriend and are given the outline of the development of their relationship. Her friends and the coaches who have supported her get shout-outs. We do get a peek into the USWNT run in the 2011 World Cup, and Solo outlines the physical struggle of her recovery from a shoulder injury that was far worse than most of us realized. But these things are not really at the heart of the narrative. A Memoir of Hope is personality driven. If Solo's memoir is a good read it is because it mirrors the outspoken wild card public persona we already know.
The title of Footballer: My Story pretty much says it all. Smith's book is 100% centered on her relationship to the sport. Where Solo's book opens with a broad portrait of her home town, her parents, with the landscape in which she grows up, Smith's book opens with an image of one of the world's greatest players as a kid with a ball at her feet. We learn that she would imitate moves that she saw on Match of the Day, and practice them using video tapes of the week's highlights. The narrative sticks with this tight focus of Smith on the ball right to the end.
Footballer: My Story does chronicle Smith's personal struggles, and they are significant:
When she grew up there was no real women's football culture to speak of in England. This is the source of her often cited complaint that the women's game in England in the 1990s "was a joke."
Like many of the great international players, she played with boys until she was kicked off the team. She grew up being welcomed into the game (invited to play with the boys) and exiled from it.
Like most international players, she had no future in the sport to imagine for herself - she wanted to be a professional footballer, but for English girls this dream was a delusion. The vast majority of English women players lose access to training before they turn 18. Even now the Women's Super League is more semi-pro than pro. And it is significantly more professional than anything anyone had ever heard of just ten years ago.
She was scouted and recruited to play in the US. This was dumb luck. With relatively little awareness of what it would mean, she enrolled at Seton Hall in New Jersey and plunged into deep culture shock.
She suffered from crippling social anxiety which she self-medicated, becoming a full-blown alcoholic in her twenties.
She suffered one serious injury after another. Torn ACL, broken leg, fractured leg - and has come back from each.
Unlike the USWNT, England has been a serious underdog in international competition for years. Under Hope Powell's leadership the team has been climbing a serious mountain. They've suffered some agonizing, cruel defeats on the world stage. When it comes to trophies and medals, they are far more familiar with failure than they are with success.
In short, Kelly Smith has worked hard, suffered, and gotten through it and over it. In spite of the list I've given above, the book is not a litany of complaints. Far from it. Smith is clearly a person with an enormous reservoir of strength. If she shares one quality with Solo, it is a certain stubbornness. A refusal to hear "no." An obstacle is not a roadblock. It's something to be hurdled.
Her narrative is also not sappy, or sentimental. It's remarkably reticent. We never learn, for example, why Smith was so afraid of speaking in front of people, or why she felt so intensely alone and isolated that she crawled up inside a bottle. This book is no confessional. On this point, it feels remarkably English - she makes absolutely no excuses for herself. Even as we learn of relationships that have sustained her, she never tells their story - Smith comes off as very private. This leaves her somewhat of a mystery as a person.
Smith's discretion compares interestingly with Solo's openness, as do her struggles with social anxiety. Solo is what the corporate world diagnoses as "non-joiner" - a person not so good at small talk, who prefers time alone to team-building exercises, prefers the company of a handful of people she trusts than that of people she doesn't know and who don't know her. Solo does not lack for confidence - in fact her confidence perhaps grounds her decisions about how she socializes. The Solo we meet in her memoir knows what she needs.
Footballer: My Story suggests a very different kind of isolation. Smith struggled with profound loneliness and depression. Real despair - and it seems that for a long time this was kept hidden from the people around her. Fortunately, it wasn't hidden for too long: Powell, her teammates and her family helped her get on solid ground. Where Solo and co-author Ann Killian give us detail about her background in order that we understand Solo's lone wolf, controversy-provoking style, Smith and her co-author Lance Hardy draw a careful line around Smith's private life.
The refusal to disclose much about herself off the pitch makes room in Smith's autobiography for lots of writing about her development as a player and a teammate. This book will teach readers a lot about the England women's team. It will also introduce readers to the basic state of European women's football. You'll also get a fantastic glimpse of Hope Powell's coaching, which is no small thing in and of itself. Smith devotes a full chapter to Powell - the whole book might just be a long thank you to the woman that Smith credits with saving not just her career, but her very soul.
The book starts of slowly and awkwardly - somehow its writing seems to mirror Smith's battles with social awkwardness, picking up pace as she gets deeper into her career and maturity. The book is most comfortable inside the game: the chapter on England's loss to France in the 2011 World Cup quarterfinals is as heart breaking as the match itself.
When you watch the game as much as some of us do, you really want to know what it feels like to play at that level. Sometimes it is a joyful experience and sometimes it is absolute physical and emotional agony. The game started off with a "bright start" but soon France put the pressure on them and then kept it up. Smith's team scored a goal against the run of play at 58 minutes. The French really piled it on then. "We knew we were in a match," Smith writes. Her ankle had been sore from the start, and the pain mounted with each passing minute.
The longer the game went on, the more pressure the French put on our goal. The pain in my ankle, too, was mounting as time passed.
At one stage I remember looking up at the clock on the scoreboard - I think we were about seventy or seventy-five minutes into the game, and we had the lead - and I thought to myself 'Just get through this.'
We were keeping them at bay. We were playing so well defensively that I thought they couldn't score. Our backs were against the wall, admittedly, but I felt so confident in our back line and goalkeeper. But the clock seemed to be going very slowly and as a result our place in the semi-finals seemed so near and yet so far away. The second half seemed to be lasting forever.
Powell made the last of her substitutions. Smith didn't have a chance to signal how much pain she was in. Powell subbed in for defenders on the basis of a miscommunication. With three minutes left France broke through the back line and the game went into extra-time. By this point Smith could scarcely put weight on her foot.
As the French ran around, screaming heir heads off in delight, it struck me there and then that I would now have to play on for another half an hour.
France kept up their attack, dominating possession. England held on for dear life. Smith writes, "I couldn't see us getting a goal. So, without thinking about it, I started to will the game to end. I wanted penalties."
Penalties they got. Smith took the first and scored. But they went out anyway. This is the kind of story that fans want: How was Smith feeling in the middle of that firestorm? What happened with the penalties? (Few players volunteered, this because a major talking point in the press.) What happened with that substitution?
Many people wrote after that match that England's women are like the men - and that English players need to practice penalties more than they do. Smith's recollections and thoughts on this whole episode are frank and sobering:
I would like to take this opportunity to say that we practiced penalties after virtually every training session in Germany. I would also like to this: you can practice penalties all day long and it makes no difference to what will happen on the day when it matters.
You can't prepare for the stadium, the crowd, the pressure. How can you plan for who is going to be on the pitch after ninety minutes, or who is going to be fit or injured? It's impossible.......
Regarding the comparison with the men's side:
Of course the England men's time have had a torrid time of it in the past, going out of the 1990 World Cup, the 1996 European Championship, the 1998 World Cup, the 2004 European Championship, and the 2006 World Cup on penalties. That is quite a list. By contrast, England's women's team have gone out of tournaments at that stage against Sweden in the European Championship final in 1984, when the team was still not officially recognized by the Football Association, and against China in a competition that didn't really matter to us, the Algarve Cup in 2005. The defeat by France in the 20011 Women's World Cup was only the third occasion. It's hardly an epidemic.
It's a good point. I appreciated hearing this from her. I also appreciated her account of watching the World Cup final with her teammates in Boston, and then what it felt like to see Breakers teammate Aya Sameshina return to the squad with the medal. ("I saw the medal but I couldn't touch it.")
Soon the Breakers suspend play and the WPS folds. She writes, "With the problems that have occurred over the years, I think it's understandable for me to feel that there will always be some kind of issue with women's football [in the United States] at the highest professional level. Let's just say that I don't think things will ever run smoothly. It's a shame, but that's the way it seems to be."
It's hard to argue with her on that score. Smith's book gives us a glimpse of the difference that the England makes, as a context for developing the game. The system has strengths and weaknesses. Club training isn't as frequent and developed as it is in the US. But the FA is building its league system slowly and carefully. The FA had better luck with television contracts until recently. The national team's growth ties directly into the league's visibility. The book left me optimistic about women's football in England - and wondering how long it will be before it tops Sweden and Germany as the destination for the world's best.
There is, of course, a lot more to the book - and to Solo's - than I've been able to describe in these two posts. But of the two, Smith's will tell you a lot more about the experience of the match and the state of the game than will Solo's.
The tone of Smith's book suggests to me that if you sat next to Smith at a party, you could probably talk with her about the game for hours. She might be quiet at the start. She might not be the most gregarious person at the table, but once she gets rolling she can hold your attention just as well as she can hold the ball. Sorry for that last analogy, but I couldn't resist it. If you want to buy Footballer: My Story, you can find it on Amazon. And there's a kindle edition.
November 24, 2021
A set text for all women's football fans as one of Watford's greatest residents talks about the amateur/semi-pro era of the game. Minus a star for not admitting her sexuality, as she couldn't come out at time of publication. I would suggest her alcoholism stems from that. I hope there's a follow-up.
May 7, 2022
This is a really important book. Not least because T here are so few books about women in sport. It’s interesting to see, through Kelly Smith’s story, how far Women’s football has come in the 10 years since this book was written - and how far it still has to go.
July 13, 2023
The Rise of Women's Football
If you want the Story of the Rise of modern era Women's Football unill the early 20 10's then this is for You .Kelly gives us Her rise to the top of the Game with a few Bumps along the way ..Don't expect any private life stories this is about Football
If you want the Story of the Rise of modern era Women's Football unill the early 20 10's then this is for You .Kelly gives us Her rise to the top of the Game with a few Bumps along the way ..Don't expect any private life stories this is about Football
December 23, 2023
Perhaps one of England's greatest footballers?
March 2, 2024
good - ish
September 7, 2014
As some of you may already know, Kelly Smith is my favorite female footballer so I was quite emotionally attached reading this autobiography. I'll try to be as unbiased as possible in this review, but fair warning...
Footballer reads true to Kelly's personality. From the interviews I've seen and read her book doesn't differ in tone, which is always crucial to any autobiography. I gained more insight into her past, and my respect for her and Hope Powell grew immensely. I know a lot of readers were unhappy with how the second half of the book was just a recount of the matches she's played over the years, but I liked it. For one, it provided an understanding of how exactly the women's game in England has progressed over the years and the amazing matches she played in but were never publicized. I think she's earned the right to do so. But the bigger point is that her narration just illustrated Kelly's introverted and humble personality. She's a team player and wanted her autobiography to also spend time focusing on where the women's game currently is in hopes that it would bring awareness and increase its respect and prominence.
The book concluded right before the London 2012 Olympics, and Kelly expressed her desire to heal in time to represent Team Great Britain (she thankfully did) and her strong conviction they stood a chance to win (they heartbreakingly lost to Canada in the quarterfinals, a game which I freely admit I cried over). I'm glad the book was released prior to the Olympics, because having to read her disappointment over not medaling would have been too raw for me to handle. It's always difficult to read about pioneers though, male or female. You feel remorse they had to struggle and many times don't get to see their efforts recognized till after they've left the field, but we obviously need these people. Regret is tempered with gratitude and admiration, which is what I felt reading Footballer.
So now that I've hopefully given a mostly unbiased review, I think it's okay for me to say THIS IS THE BEST AUTOBIOGRAPHY EVER GO READ IT IF YOU'RE A FAN OF FOOTBALL AND WOMEN'S SPORTS BECAUSE YOU WON'T REGRET IT KELLY PLEASE DON'T EVER RETIRE I WILL STILL ROOT FOR YOU HOBBLING ON THE FIELD WHEN YOU'RE 60.
Footballer reads true to Kelly's personality. From the interviews I've seen and read her book doesn't differ in tone, which is always crucial to any autobiography. I gained more insight into her past, and my respect for her and Hope Powell grew immensely. I know a lot of readers were unhappy with how the second half of the book was just a recount of the matches she's played over the years, but I liked it. For one, it provided an understanding of how exactly the women's game in England has progressed over the years and the amazing matches she played in but were never publicized. I think she's earned the right to do so. But the bigger point is that her narration just illustrated Kelly's introverted and humble personality. She's a team player and wanted her autobiography to also spend time focusing on where the women's game currently is in hopes that it would bring awareness and increase its respect and prominence.
The book concluded right before the London 2012 Olympics, and Kelly expressed her desire to heal in time to represent Team Great Britain (she thankfully did) and her strong conviction they stood a chance to win (they heartbreakingly lost to Canada in the quarterfinals, a game which I freely admit I cried over). I'm glad the book was released prior to the Olympics, because having to read her disappointment over not medaling would have been too raw for me to handle. It's always difficult to read about pioneers though, male or female. You feel remorse they had to struggle and many times don't get to see their efforts recognized till after they've left the field, but we obviously need these people. Regret is tempered with gratitude and admiration, which is what I felt reading Footballer.
So now that I've hopefully given a mostly unbiased review, I think it's okay for me to say THIS IS THE BEST AUTOBIOGRAPHY EVER GO READ IT IF YOU'RE A FAN OF FOOTBALL AND WOMEN'S SPORTS BECAUSE YOU WON'T REGRET IT KELLY PLEASE DON'T EVER RETIRE I WILL STILL ROOT FOR YOU HOBBLING ON THE FIELD WHEN YOU'RE 60.
July 11, 2013
This is far from great literature, but if you're a football fan then you'll appreciate Kelly's career and also her journey through alcohol abuse and self-harm. Despite this, the book is oddly devoid of emotional context and any mention of personal relationships. With over 100 appearances for England, she offers some insight into international tournaments although the book ends before the London Olympics, a unique occasion for Kelly to represent GB and beat Brazil in front of 70,000 people at Wembley stadium.
Edited to add: Maybe the above is a little harsh; on reflection the following review sums up my feelings rather well http://fromaleftwing.blogspot.co.uk/2...
Edited to add: Maybe the above is a little harsh; on reflection the following review sums up my feelings rather well http://fromaleftwing.blogspot.co.uk/2...
September 23, 2012
Although no literary masterpiece it is an interesting read. Her story of how she coped with various injuries and then her problems with alcohol were interesting and an interesting insight. It also follows the story of the England Women's team which as a football fan I found interesting. I would have liked a bit more information about each section, she talks about rehab dealing with things and coping strategies I would have liked to know what these were as she has had injuries since that must have been hard to cope with. She just talked about how silly she felt.
Well worth reading especially if you like sport and personal stories.
Well worth reading especially if you like sport and personal stories.
September 5, 2012
Kelly showed real courage to speak about her struggles with alcoholism and injuries. She writes like she is sitting right next you chatting away over tea. A quick and easy read into the history of women's football in England and her career. If you are a Kelly Smith fan this one is not to be missed. Although I agree with another reviewer, you won't hear any scandalous bits in this one but it's still a good read.
January 27, 2021
An interesting insight to the background and history of women’s football over the last 25 years, the challenges faced behind the big games and tournaments too. An easy read
July 29, 2012
I wish it had a few more personal anecdotes but still a nice insight into the life of England's finest female footballer.
January 26, 2013
Birthday present. It was hard-going - just didn't involve me which is pretty rubbish since I am a female who is interested in football! I found it repetitive and fairly dull.
January 22, 2015
was an honest autobiography, sadly it lacked warmth and humour. but having said that it was interesting to read about the struggles of Englands best womens player in the not too distant past.
January 12, 2017
inspirational story!
January 3, 2016
poor and very impersonal
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews