England Women more confident now than last World Cup, says Lucy Bronze
Written by News on 19/06/2019
Defender Lucy Bronze feels confidence in the England Women’s camp is stronger than when they reached the World Cup semi-finals four years ago.
The Lionesses face Japan, the side which beat them in 2015, in their final Group D encounter on Wednesday already assured of a place in the last 16 of this year’s tournament.
Athough the 27-year-old believes there is more expectancy on the Lionesses to win the World Cup this time around, she believes they are more than equipped to handle the added pressure.
“The expectation wasn’t there in 2015 – we hadn’t beaten a lot of the top nations ever but now we have beaten the likes of France, Germany and the USA,” Bronze said.
“We can compete against them now and have a chance of winning any game we take part in.
“In 2015 we perhaps overachieved a little bit reaching the semi-final but coming into this World Cup we’ve got a lot more belief. That’s one of the things that’s changed.”
England came into the tournament on the back of SheBelieves success, where they beat Japan in the round-robin tournament ,on the way to lifting the trophy.
Bronze insists their success, alongside the pain of losing both World Cup and European semi-finals in the past four years, is spurring the side on this time around.
“The semi-final defeats have given us extra motivation for this team to get to a final,” Bronze added.
“The whole SheBelieves tournament and winning the trophy also gave us huge confidence.
“We’re a team who aspires to win trophies, we’re not here to make the numbers up.
“We want to win. We want to win every game. We want to get to the final and we want to beat any team that is in front of us – and we know that we can.”
(c) Sky News 2019: England Women more confident now than last World Cup, says Lucy Bronze
