Lioness and Manchester City striker Chloe Kelly (Image: )<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n When Chloe Kelly scored the winning penalty in the women\u2019s England team\u2019s World Cup game against Nigeria, the 69mph shot was more powerful than any recorded by a male or female player in topflight English football for the 22-23 season. Kelly\u2019s kick catapulted the team into the quarter finals, and the Lionesses would go on to come second in the tournament.<\/p>\n Yet research from Doritos reveals that only\u00a0one\u00a0in six UK adults believe that this record was achieved by a woman.\u00a0<\/p>\n As a result, a 2,475 square foot mural of Lioness and Manchester City striker Chloe, 26, has been unveiled in her team\u2019s home town to commemorate the achievement, aiming to \u2018crunch\u2019 society\u2019s stereotypes in sport and beyond.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are currently 240 statues of sportspeople in the UK, yet only three recognise female athletes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n READ MORE… <\/strong> Team GB Olympics star planning to copy Lionesses for Paris 2024 <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n A 2,475 square foot mural of the Lioness striker has been unveiled. (Image: )<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n \u201cWe still have a long way to go to achieve equality when it comes to women\u2019s sport,\u201d says Chloe, who grew up in west London as the youngest of seven siblings, with five older brothers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWomen tend to hold back from saying, \u2018Yes I am the best\u2019. So it\u2019s important to share stories of when we have proved people wrong.<\/p>\n \u201cAs women, most of us have been told many times in our careers that we’re not good enough, or we\u2019re not male. Opportunities probably haven’t been the same. This has certainly been true in women\u2019s football.\u201d<\/p>\n Incredibly, after it was banned in England in 1921, women\u2019s football only became legal in 1971.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n With such a history of oppression, it made the Lionesses inspirational Euros tournament win in 2022 even more monumental.<\/p>\n The achievement put women\u2019s football and its players on the map, and the sport\u2019s star has risen ever since, with legions of new fans and sold out stadium matches.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we have achieved is incredible, but we\u2019re on a journey and there\u2019s still a lot of work to do to have that equality,\u201d says Chloe.<\/p>\n \u201cBut female footballers are more visible than ever after the Euros, and that\u2019s great – we want to inspire the next generation of Lionesses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI looked up to Kelly Smith and Rachel Yankey, two idols of mine. But there weren’t many opportunities to see them unless you went to a game. Now we\u2019re on TV, we\u2019re in magazines – people are able to see us, hopefully more than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n And Chloe is keen to use her platform for change.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to shout that we can and will achieve great things if we believe in ourselves. We women need to shut our ears to any negative comments and go for it,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Indeed, Chloe was told \u2018no\u2019 time and time again as a fledgling footballer.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been told \u2018no\u2019 my whole\u00a0life,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI remember playing football with my brothers in a tournament and after the first game we were told, \u2018She can’t play on your team\u2019. They were like, \u2018Why? We won the first game\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI just wanted to have the ball at my feet and to play with my brothers. But that opportunity was taken away from me because I was female. It was obviously disappointing. But we go again, we break another barrier, we play in a different tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n As women, Chloe says her and her fellow footballers have had a harder hill to climb.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout our career that\u2019s what we\u2019ve been made to do – break down barriers. And we still have to do so today,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really important that along the journey you don’t just accept the word \u2018no\u2019, because it\u2019s not going to get us where we need to be.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important to back ourselves as female athletes and encourage other women, no matter what category of\u00a0life\u00a0they are in, that we can all achieve great things. Nobody can tell you that you can’t.\u201d<\/p>\n As she looks to the future, Chloe is hungry for more.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI want to look back at my career when I hang up my boots and see medals around my neck.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to win world cups, leagues and every title possible,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I want to keep making my family proud. My brothers were there when I began, accepting me, creating opportunities for me. They were there when I was getting told \u2018no\u2019, and it\u2019s great to have them by my side now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [ad_2]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [ad_1] Lioness and Manchester City striker Chloe Kelly (Image: ) When Chloe Kelly scored the winning penalty in the women\u2019s England team\u2019s World Cup game against Nigeria, the 69mph shot was more powerful than any recorded by a male or female player in topflight English football for the 22-23 season. Kelly\u2019s kick catapulted the team […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[763],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33853"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Lioness](\"https:\/\/cdn.images.express.co.uk\/img\/dynamic\/130\/590x\/secondary\/Chloe-Kelly-5292295.jpg?r=1711638045341\" "\\"Lioness")
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