Although she is very early on in her career, Fran Kirby is already one of the most popular players in British Women’s football and is an integral part of the Chelsea Ladies team. At age 24, she has a huge future ahead of her and will only improve. With her pace, low centre of gravity and eye for goal, she was once described as a ‘Mini Messi’.
Kirby was born and raised in Reading and joined her hometown club at the age of 7, playing for the various age groups until she was 16 where she was integrated into the first team and made her first team debut in 2010. Unfortunately, personal issues threatened to end her career before it had even begun and she had to take a year out of the game to cope with these issues. When she did return in 2012, she came back in stunning fashion; firing Reading Women to the FA Women’s Premier Division (Southern Division) title as top scorer with 32 goals. This promoted Reading to the inaugural WSL 2 and Kirby carried her form into the new league with another fantastic season. Reading finished in 3rd place, challenging for the title until the very final weeks and were led by Kirby as she scored a league high tally of 24 goals in 16 appearances. Her stunning rate of goal scoring allowed her to pick up the first ever WSL 2 Player’s Player of the Year award.
The start of the 2015 season was impressive once again and after scoring 11 goals in her first 5 appearances for Reading that season, she became the first ever WSL 2 player to be called into the England Women’s senior squad and she went on to represent her country at the 2015 World Cup in Canada.
Kirby’s performances at the World Cup persuaded Chelsea to make the move for the striker and she made a mid-season move to the Blues in 2015. She made the best of debuts as she came off the bench and scored a lovely goal, lobbing the keeper in the process. At the end of that season, Chelsea won their first ever top league title and Kirby played her part by scoring twice in the title clinching match against Sunderland Ladies that ended 4-0. Kirby also made history for the Blues by being their first ever scorer in the Champion’s League in a game against Glasgow City Women.
Most recently, Kirby has continued her goal scoring form and was the top scorer in this year’s Spring Series despite only starting 2 games and coming on as a sub in 3 others showing that her eye for goal is as sharp as ever even with limited minutes. Already this season Kirby has scored 3 goals, the most important one being the vital away goal against Bayern Munich where she advanced one on one with the keeper and finished excellently into the top corner.
Fran Kirby has grown in her time at Chelsea into one of the most dependable players at the club, always popping up with vital goals and is currently one of the first names on the team sheet. With 15 goals in 17 league appearances for the club so far, she could end up becoming one of Chelsea’s all-time great strikers.
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