She’s the England right-back who manager Phil Neville hailed “the best player in the world” – and Lioness Lucy Bronze’s achievements since turning professional in 2007 certainly support that statement.
A three-times Women’s Super League winner with Liverpool and Manchester City, Bronze has lifted both the League Cup and FA Cup and, for the past two seasons, won the UEFA Women’s Champions League with Lyon, her current club.
Off the pitch, she’s twice won the PFA Women’s Players’ Player of the Year, being shortlisted for the Best FIFA Women’s Player in 2017 and 2018 and was named the BBC Women’s Footballer of the Year 2018.
Yet despite her success, Bronze says she only felt truly accepted as a professional player after the last FIFA Women’s World Cup, in 2015. “Every time you make a mistake as a female footballer, you get told to give up and you don’t belong,” she says. “After scoring the goal that sent us through to the quarter-finals, I felt respect I never had before – that gave me the feeling of being accepted.”
With England headed to the knockout rounds at the top of their group at this year’s tournament in France, hopes are building that Bronze and her fellow Lionesses can go one better than their male counterparts did last summer, and make it all the way to the final in Lyon on 7 July.
For the 27-year-old, the journey to France began two decades ago, in the streets, playgrounds and parks of Alnwick, where she was born and raised. She fell in love with the game playing with her older brother, Jorge, and joined a local boys’ team.
“Up until I was twelve I was the only girl playing with a group of boys,” she says. “I had to beg my mum to let me wear shorts to school so I could play football at lunch.”
At 12, Bronze’s fledgling career reached a turning point. FA rules banned mixed teams beyond that age (the limit has since been raised to 18, in line with other nations) and she was forced to quit the boys’ team. “The coach told me I was too good to stop, and begged my mum to go find me a girls’ team, because one day I was going to play for England,” she says.
On the advice of her former coach, she began training at Sunderland, where a women’s team was already established; her Portuguese father, Joaquin, would drive her 90 minutes each way to training. But Bronze credits her mother as well. “My biggest fan has always been my mum, in everything I do,” she says. “Even though she doesn’t understand football too well, she tries.”
Bronze, who will be flying the flag for Team Visa at the World Cup this year, joined Sunderland’s senior team at 16, and was promptly named manager’s player of the year. The following season, aged 17, she was player of the match in her first FA Cup final, despite being beaten.
“It’s the match I’m most proud of, playing against the superstars at Arsenal,” says Bronze. “I got to match up against a childhood hero like Rachel Yankey, and I won player of the match, although we did lose 2-1 – which, back then, was like a victory against that Arsenal team.”
After a stint training in the US, Bronze signed for Everton, and was named in their UEFA Women’s Champions League squad. By then she had already been capped for England’s U17s and U19s.
Her senior team debut came in 2013, while she was at Liverpool. “Nervous excitement” is how she describes her reaction to getting the call-up. “It was a case of not knowing what to expect, but knowing it was where I had always wanted to be,” she says.
Not all football fans are fully behind the growing popularity of women’s football, insisting it is a “man’s sport”, but Bronze – who says the worst career advice she’s ever received was “not to be so competitive” – believes this World Cup, the highest profile to date, will quash that perception.
“I want the whole world to respect women’s football after this, and I hope it inspires more girls and women to play and to know they will be respected and treated as an equal.”
She recalls her first day at Man City with fondness on that basis. “I was shown to my locker with all my kit and taken to the state-of-the-art gym and fields, just like the boys,” she says.
She’s determined to bring the winners’ trophy home from France with the Lionesses and she has a message for all those doubters yet to be convinced by women’s football: “Sit back and enjoy.”
Visa is the Official Payment Services Partner of FIFA and sponsors the FIFA Women’s World Cup
