All Euro 2025 players under pressure to ‘explode’ women’s game, insists Bronze | OneFootball

Lucy Bronze believes every player at the European Championship feels a greater pressure to perform because of the boost women’s football receives as a result of success.

“Every single player that puts on a shirt in this tournament probably feels that,” the defender said, as England prepare to play Sweden in their quarter-final on Thursday night. “I can imagine the Swiss team feel that because they’re the home nation. Every other team wants to replicate what England did in 2022, what the Netherlands did before us, and really boost women’s football and we know that success comes from that.

“We know that we’re very fortunate in England that when we have success it really does explode the game and I think it’s what we want all over Europe and all over the world.”

The meteoric growth of women’s football in England after the Lionesses’ success at Euro 2022 is a bonus, though not their “why” as a team. “My main reason for winning the tournament is to lift the trophy,” Bronze said. “But a part and parcel of success is that it helps build the women’s game and that’s something that obviously I want to happen in England more and more.”

Bronze is competing at her seventh major tournament with England. Kosovare Asllani, who joined Sweden’s coach, Peter Gerhardsson, in facing the media, is competing in her eighth. “It’s a bit like the fun starts now,” the midfielder said. “It’s always a tough game. England have a lot of talented players whereas our biggest strength lies in the way we play as a team.”

Bronze said: “Someone mentioned that Asllani said it’s going to be fun. My interpretation of that is that this is two teams that are in this game to win it, no sitting back, both very talented, athletic, physical and everything that you think of in a football game could happen because both teams are at the top level.”

The teams are very familiar with each other. Many of Sweden’s squad play in the Women’s Super League and the countries met in the 2019 World Cup bronze medal match, with Sweden the victors, in the Euro 2022 quarter-finals, with England winning, and shared the spoils in the Nations League last season, with two draws.

“We respect England, the team they have and everything they have achieved so far,” Asllani said. “Do we fear them? No. We don’t have the word fear in our dictionary. We look up the word courage. Of course, you have to respect one of the best sides in the world and we have the perfect gameplan for this match. I feel a sense of longing to start the game. We want to go out and play our football intensely and physically. In our minds there is only one outcome and that is to win.”

The key to success for England is focusing on themselves on and off the pitch. “Coming off the back of the France game and having a lot of talking points actually brought the team closer together,” Bronze said.

“I think you saw that in the two performances that came after. We’re not focused too much on noises around other teams or ourselves. We’re only focused on what we do on the training pitch, what we do in games, how we recover, how we perform and how we lift each other up.”

Bronze also went deeper on what the mantra of being “proper England” means. “We have a lot of younger players and new players who have very different experiences of playing for England compared to the likes of myself, who know that England used to have to dig deep all the time,” she said. “The 2015 World Cup was the first time we beat Germany – that’s insane to think about now – but England in the past had to dig out performances and was the underdog, not the favourite.

“This England team has developed from there, football has changed. Obviously we’re a very talented team, with a lot of technical and tactical ability, but we don’t want to ever forget that we are England, we are ‘proper England’, and if push comes to shove we can win a game in any means possible.”

Header image: [Photograph: Harriet Lander/The FA/Getty Images]