Lucy Bronze: 'Barcelona can beat Chelsea – but I'd love to see Lauren James play well' | OneFootball

The Champions League is the tournament I always want to be a part of – I just love playing in big games. It’s amazing to have made the semi-final with Barcelona.

The competition is such a big spectacle now. It’s always been something that has been special to the players, but now the fans are really buying into it too.

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It was amazing to see thousands of people turn up for the group stage and quarter-finals, and it looks like there will be big crowds in every stadium for the semi-finals as well.

I can’t wait to visit Stamford Bridge for our first leg. I’m very familiar with Chelsea, having played against them a lot while with Manchester City and even Lyon. I know a lot of their English players, of course, and how Emma Hayes likes to set up her team.

It will be nice to come back to England too. I’ve probably had more ticket requests from friends for this match than any other this season, because it’s so easy to get to!

We know that Lauren James will be one of Chelsea’s key players during the semi-final.

She’s someone that I know really well both on and off the pitch. I think I probably spent the most amount of time with her at the recent England camp, funnily enough, even though there’s probably the biggest age difference between us out of all the squad.

LJ’s a player that everyone’s talking about this season. She’s finally had the chance to show off her talent.

Not only is she technically gifted, but she’s incredibly strong too. Even if teams have worked out how to play against her, that doesn’t mean they can stop her.

I want to beat Chelsea, of course, and I'm fully confident that Barcelona can do so. But I also want to see LJ play well in a massive game, because it's going to give her so much confidence for when she puts on an England shirt.

Millie Bright is going to be a big miss for Chelsea. She gets them out of trouble a lot, and she’s one of the toughest defenders because of her physical strength and heading ability.

But we know that Chelsea have got good squad depth. They might be missing one of their key players, but they’ve got plenty of backups who are more than capable of putting in an incredible performance.

We were very happy to hear that we’ll be playing the second leg at Camp Nou, hopefully in front of at least 70,000 fans.

Our fans can make such a difference, and we’ve seen that all season. Hopefully we can sell it out, and create an amazing atmosphere for a massive match.

Winning a fourth Champions League title

If we manage to beat Chelsea, it will be either Arsenal or Wolfsburg in the final.

It’s two great teams going head-to-head in that semi-final. I think most people view Wolfsburg as the favourites, and they do look like they’re in a slightly better place at the minute, having watched them beat Bayern Munich at the weekend.

But Arsenal have been finding ways to get wins. They’re full of confidence, and although they have a lot of players missing, they’ve got enough squad depth to put on a solid performance and get past Wolfsburg.

They also have the advantage of playing their second leg at the Emirates, which looks like it could be a sell-out.

It will be my fourth Champions League title if I win it with Barcelona this season. While this is impressive, I played in a Lyon team where everybody had won it about 10 times!

All jokes aside, winning the Champions League this year could potentially mean a lot more to me than it did in the past.

It would show that I’m capable of winning the tournament with separate teams, even if they have completely different ways of playing football. I’ve also had to adapt my game in recent years because of injuries, so to still be able to perform at the highest level is amazing.