The inside story of Lionesses' new goal celebration and 'finishers' group chat
England's Euro 2025 run has served as a reminder that tournament football is a squad game, and nowhere is this more true than with the finger-clicking celebration on show during Sunday's victory over Wales. The celebration showcased the players who Sarina Wiegman likes to call her 'finishers', and one member of that group, Chloe Kelly, revealed they even have their own group chat - initially established to share photos of what has become an iconic tournament moment.
"It's great, we have a little group of us, a group chat - 'the finishers' as you call it and 'the positive clicks' we call it." Kelly said. "On the bench before the game, you probably saw we were all clicking, like 'what are they doing?!' but it was just a positive click - and we said, if one of us comes on and scores, let's do that as our celebration, the one that we came up with it on the bench.
"We work really hard on the training pitch and the gym, probably sometimes it goes unnoticed but it's just about sticking together and being at our best when called upon and training hard to get the best out of each other. The girls that are starting the game making sure that they're fully prepared, but also [we're] making sure we're prepared to go on the pitch and do a great job... we've got a great group of girls, it's just enjoying the whole experience as a group."
Two of those finishers combined for goals against Wales, with Beth Mead and Aggie Beever-Jones each assisting the other in the 6-1 victory. It helped bring the celebration to a wider audience, and the photos have been doing the rounds - privately as well as publicly.
'I think it might have been Maya [Le Tissier],' Kelly said when asked about who came up with the celebration idea. 'She made the group chat. We get our pictures on an app and some of us didn't have the pictures of the click celebration and that's where the group chat came from, to send each other the pictures of the celebration.
'I was saying to Lotte [Wubben-Moy] throughout the tournaments that we've been playing in, whether that was the home Euros, Australia or here, the group of finishers have been incredible, supporting the team that are playing and being ready for your moment.
'The level of training is really high in the gym and we're just grafting. It's been really nice to see that as a consistent thing with England - the finishers being ready for their moment and taking it when it comes but also absolutely grafting.'
With England now into the knockout stages, facing Sweden in Zurich on Thursday, the prospect of a penalty shoot-out deciding their fate has started to loom large. Kelly has plenty of experience of that situation, scoring the decisive spot-kick in the 2023 Finalissima victory over Brazil and repeating the trick against Nigeria at the World Cup later that year.
'Preparing for the tournament you know you always have to prepare in all areas,' the Arsenal star said. 'In the build-up we've all been preparing well. So it's important in every area we are prepared. I think for me it's just staying relaxed and that's the case for any penalty shootout.'
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