How Lucy Bronze became one of the football greats of all time

“Lucy Bronze is the best player in the world, without a doubt – with her athleticism and quality,” says Phil Neville. “There is no player like her in the world.”

And it turns out that the former England administrator is right. The 30-year-old defender is one of the world’s best right-backs, and like her England teammate Fran Kirby said, “If she gets the ball and rides with it, there’s not many that can stop her.”

Now Bronze will use her cues to help England win their first European Championship title, with the Lionesses hoping to play in this year’s final after their semifinal match against Sweden this evening.

Since making her debut in 2013, Bronze has amassed more than 160 senior national appearances and played more than 80 times for her country, including as part of the 2015 and 2019 World Cup squads. tournament, becoming the first female footballer to be nominated for the prestigious BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.

“We were successful and I scored a few goals and I think my football life has changed overnight. People knew my name and who I was, and I had a target on my back when I was playing, but it was something I enjoyed and always wanted,” she said of her time at the 2015 World Cup.

And the accolades keep piling up. In 2019, she became the first English footballer to win the UEFA Women’s Player of the Year. A year later, she was named FIFA’s best player. Most recently, when naming their all-time Euros XI for betwayEngland legends Faye White and Kelly Smith called Bronze by their side.

From the injury that nearly crushed her football dreams to her now overflowing trophy case, we follow how Lucy Bronze went from cub to lioness.

A close-knit family unit and a picturesque childhood

Bronze was raised on the remote ‘Holy Island’ Lindisfarne off the north east coast of England until she was seven, and has lived in Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland ever since. Born Lucia Roberta Tough Bronze, her father, Joaquim, taught the toddler Portuguese.

“We were raised bilingually,” she told The Guardian in 2017. “Dad always spoke to us in Portuguese, but we always answered in English. That’s probably why I don’t feel comfortable speaking Portuguese.”

In an interview with BBC Sports in 2018, Bronze recalled her first football memory: “Playing with the boys, and one of the guys in the other teams laughing at playing against a girl; Needless to say, he came off the field crying towards the end.”

While Bronze didn’t shy away from bold displays of defiance, she also relied on her mother to put naysayers in their place. She once told an unwitting male coach who suggested Bronze couldn’t handle playing in all-boy squads: “Right. No one tells my little girl she can’t do something.” In the end, her daughter continued to play with them until the rules no longer allowed at age 12.

Bronze has remained extremely close to her mother and regularly posts that they hang out on social media. She recently shared a photo of the two of them for Easter lunch with Bronze’s rumored girlfriend Manchester City footballer Keira Walsh.

An injury prone road to stardom

Bronze joined local women’s team Blyth Town before moving to the Black Cats in 2007. Within a year, she was named captain of the team after winning Manager’s Player of the Year thanks to her incredible performance in the FA Women’s Premier League Northern Division. However, it was in 2009 when she really came into the limelight after Sunderland defeated Arsenal in the FA Women’s Cup final.

Following this win, Bronze moved to the United States that summer to play for the North Carolina Tar Heels women’s soccer team after their coach, Anson Dorrance, spotted the young star at a soccer camp and offered her a scholarship.

“So I went to America. I had a great time there. But improved there. I got better there. England then called me back and said: ‘If you go to America, we just won’t choose you,’ she explained in an interview with The Telegraph. “So I kind of have this, stuck between a rock and a hard situation. People always ask me why I never did that, why I didn’t stay in America. I didn’t like it? I loved it. I played at the best team. The players I played with, I think about eight of them have won at least one World Cup.”

Ultimately, Bronze decided to return to England. “And funny, well, not funny enough, but then my knee injury started,” she continued. The young cub’s career was almost over before he even started. On the Game Changer podcast, Bronze addressed the challenges of a recurring knee injury she struggled with as a teenager, revealing that she had felt a lack of support from England. At the age of 17, Bronze was told she would be dropped from the roster for the UEFA Women’s Under-19 Championship.

“So they’re like, yeah, we’re not going to pick you. And I was like, ‘What?’ As if this is in three months. I’m in a hospital bed. Not because of my misdeeds, but simply because of an unfortunate set of circumstances.”

She eventually returned to Sunderland, where she won all domestic honors in England during her spell there. All the while, she studied sports science at Leeds Metropolitan University and worked part-time in a pizzeria, changing the color of the storefront to bronze in her honor during the 2019 World Cup.

Since then, she has played for Everton, Manchester City and the French team Olympique Lyonnais, which the sports legend finds hard to believe. “I didn’t dream of joining Man. City once as a pro, or as a representative of England, because I didn’t know that was possible.”

In June 2022, she agreed to join the Spanish giants on a two-year contract, where she will return after the European Championship.

Life outside the beautiful game

Bronze admitted to The Guardian that there were no female footballers she could look up to as a role model growing up. In fact, even now she finds it surreal that she is seen as a role model to many others.

“There are a lot of players who come to me now and ask me questions. It took a while for it to click in my head and I thought they ask me questions because they really look up to me or they think I have the answers or I have the answers. experience. Once that clicked in my head, I enjoyed it,” she said.

It’s something she wants to explore further as part of her post-play future. “What I would like to do is what they do at the FA and UEFA. I really like the idea of ​​changing the game, like Baroness Sue Campbell, the [FA] head of women’s football,” she told The Gentlewoman magazine. “I want to help. I’ve played it, I know all about it, and so many things can be done to change it – things that aren’t that hard. Or maybe I’ll just retire, buy a bar in Spain and run that.”

Nevertheless, Bronze has one more thing to do before she can think about putting up her boots.

“I’m still driven by the fact that I didn’t win everything. Always my main focus has always been a winner with England,” she told the Game Changers podcast. “I didn’t know what the Champions League was when I was younger, but you always know what the World Cup is. I think that’s the one you always hear about. So yes, I’ve always wanted to win a World Cup, a European Championship, an Olympics – all three would be equally good.”

With the Tonight European Championship England vs Sweden semi-finalshopefully Bronze is one step closer to fulfilling her childhood dream.