MY REDEMPTION

A footballer recalls recovering from a gambling addiction and becoming an antigambling advocate with some help from his faith and family.

Kelly grew up in Coventry, England, as one of seven children, a young Black man in the racially hostile 1970s and ’80s. Transfixed by Brazil’s hosting of the 1974 World Cup, Kelly showed early promise as an amateur Sunday league player. This and other early successes earned him an apprenticeship at Bristol City, where he became the club’s youngest starting player at 16. While climbing the ranks of local clubs, he also began to wrangle with his gambling “demon.” A career high point occurred as a result of joining the Swedish club Umeå: He scored a celebrated 1991 League Cup goal at Liverpool’s Anfield Stadium. In addition to his matches, Kelly narrates his encounter­s—some happy, others unfortunate—with local celebrities, casinos, women, and street violence. Throughout his young life, he never stopped betting. In 2010, he hit rock bottom—he was £192,000 in debt and declared bankruptcy. The second half of the book outlines his renewed Christian faith and the loyalty of his family, both of which allowed him to reemerge as an antigambling advocate. Kelly recounts the success of his second vocation with as much enthusiasm as the first. Overall, his story contains the raw materials of a gripping sports and addiction memoir, though the delivery can be labored. Reflections on his long career and sequences of nights out, team intrigue, and business drama sometimes blend together, leaving the reader wishing for more insight into the psychology of his addiction and the work of getting better. The prose leans on cliches, but it also speaks to sincerely held and earned truths: “We all go through some sort of trauma or adversity in our lives, and I am no different, but I truly believe that it is how you recover that really defines you as a person.”

An eventful life set down as a ledger of events.