It was a prospect that felt even further away a year ago.<\/p>\n
Kelly acknowledged that his move to Newcastle did not go “the way he wanted” after he joined from Bournemouth on a free transfer in June 2024.<\/p>\n
Such was the form of Dan Burn and Lewis Hall, who played in Kelly’s preferred positions at left-sided centre-back and left-back, he ended up making only a handful of league starts for Newcastle.<\/p>\n
“As a player, you want to go in, show what you can do and play consistent football,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But I bear no ill towards Newcastle. They gave me an opportunity to grow and play at a really good club.”<\/p>\n
Kelly instead reflects fondly on the “unbelievable” atmosphere he experienced at St James’ Park.<\/p>\n
He is also “proud to have stood alongside” the players who went on to end Newcastle’s 70-year wait for a major domestic trophy by winning the Carabao Cup.<\/p>\n
Kelly had moved on by then, but he started in the wins against AFC Wimbledon and Chelsea in the earlier rounds and came off the bench in the semi-final first-leg victory at Arsenal.<\/p>\n
Just as a medal has recently been sent to forward Miguel Almiron to mark his contribution – the Paraguayan also left in the mid-season window, for Atlanta United – one is on the way to Kelly.<\/p>\n
The centre-back clearly left on good terms with head coach Eddie Howe, who had previously brought him to Bournemouth before signing him for Newcastle.<\/p>\n
“The amount of players who have played under him and progressed is top,” he said. “I’ll always hold him in high regard.”<\/p>\n
Kelly had not long said farewell to Howe when he found himself walking into the Juventus dressing room for the first time.<\/p>\n
It was a space where defensive giants like Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini once sat.<\/p>\n
And now Kelly is following in their footsteps.<\/p>\n
“I’ve come a long way,” he said. “You could say I’m just getting started.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a prospect that felt even further away a year ago. Kelly acknowledged that his move to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-217740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}