It has been a wild few days for former Bournemouth and Newcastle United defender Lloyd Kelly – the sort of week that turns a player into a cult hero with a club’s fans.<\/p>\n
And this is no ordinary club. This is Juventus, arguably the most famous club in Italy and one of the superpowers of European football.<\/p>\n
First, Kelly netted his first goal for Juve on Saturday, helping them to a 4-3 victory against last season’s Champions League finalists Inter Milan in the iconic Derby d’Italia.<\/p>\n
Then the former England Under-21 centre-back grabbed a dramatic late equaliser in Tuesday’s incredible 4-4 draw at home to Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League.<\/p>\n
His goal against Dortmund was the first time an English player had scored for the Italian club in the Champions League – and the second Briton to do so, after Welshman Aaron Ramsey, who poked home a Cristiano Ronaldo free-kick in 2019.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old went from villain to hero against Dortmund, having given away a penalty as his side trailed 4-2 going into the fourth minute into added time.<\/p>\n
However the ‘Old Lady’ rallied and scored twice in two minutes to somehow earn a draw, with Kelly’s equaliser coming in the 96th minute.<\/p>\n
Four days earlier against Inter, Kelly opened the scoring at Allianz Stadium – the first top-flight goal of his career – in his 22nd appearance for Juve in all competitions.<\/p>\n
It made him the first English defender to score for the Turin club in Serie A.<\/p>\n
Kelly, who joined Juventus in February, did not score in the Premier League during his time at Bournemouth or Newcastle, and his previous goal – in a Cherries FA Cup tie – was 18 months ago.<\/p>\n
Now he has now scored in back-to-back matches for the first time in his career – in one of Italy’s biggest fixtures and a Champions League thriller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It has been a wild few days for former Bournemouth and Newcastle United defender Lloyd Kelly – the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-149745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}