Women’s World Cup 2019: England must capture irresistible sensation of winning against USA

The Lionesses talisman knows this is the defining moment where they can slam the door on past disappointments

It is time. Time for the cycle to be broken. Time for the pretenders to become contenders. Time to progress. And on the eve of a World Cup semi-final, the biggest game of already-accomplished career, Lucy Bronze understood that.

“What I said at the beginning of this tournament was we’ve had back-to-back semi-finals, an amazing feat for this team and an amazing achievement to be able to do it on a consistent basis,” she recalled. “But we’re short of that last step.”

In Ottawa four years ago, Bronze was present as Laura Bassett’s freak own goal denied her a first appearance in a World Cup final. In Enschede two summers later, she saw a European Championship that had opened up slam shut.

Now, a third successive major tournament semi-final brings Bronze and England up against the United States: the trailblazers, standard-bearers and reigning world champions of women’s football, absolutely intent on retaining their crown.

Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd and their team-mates look as single-minded as ever in their pursuit of success. On Friday night, their robust, muscular approach proved too much for the host nation France, their only genuine threat up to this point.

That same approach could easily make a mockery of Phil Neville’s insistence on a patient, possession-based style of play. It may well exploit the gaps in England’s defence and midfield that have been visible almost every time they have played at this World Cup, but that have so far gone unpunished.

But at the Parc Olympique Lyonnais tonight, the United States must nevertheless prepare to meet an England team determined to take that last step Bronze speaks about, and exuding a quiet, assuring confidence that they will do so.

It still seems premature to describe the senior English national sides – both men’s and women’s – as ‘semi-final teams’. But that is precisely what they have been at five of the last six major international tournaments: semi-final teams and nothing more.

The women now account for the majority of those five semi-final showings since 2015 and there is a sense this latest chance should not be missed. As one of the world’s best-funded women’s outfits, England must start contesting finals again. Bronze suggested as much yesterday with an interesting, unprompted observation.

Lucy Bronze wants England to take ‘the last step’ (Getty)

“You look now, the four teams left, we are the only team that hasn’t reached a final,” she correctly pointed out. The United States won in 2015. Sweden reached the Olympics showpiece a year later. The Netherlands won the aforementioned Euros in their own country.

England’s last final appearance, by comparison, was nearly a decade ago. Only two players from that 2009 European Championship squad remain. The rest will not be able to draw on any recent international success tonight, only the frustration of their two failures at the penultimate hurdle.

Reaching and winning finals is a habit that Neville wants his players to develop. He has been telling them this week about the irresistible sensation of lifting his first league title with Manchester United. “I wore my medal for the next two or three days,” he said. “I thought: ‘I need more of this.’”

But ask Bronze and the recent track record of disappointment could stand in England’s favour. “We’ve probably got that edge where we are that little bit more hungry for it,” she said on Monday. In Ottawa, they “learned more than anyone could ever learn from any defeat”. They now know that to reach a final “takes more”.

England celebrate victory over Norway in the quarter-finals (Getty)

Football matches are not decided by hunger, of course, least of all in the latter stages of the World Cup. But listen to the veterans of Ottawa and Enschede in this squad, and you hear a steely insistence that the same mistakes will not be allowed to happen again.

The likes of Bronze, captain Steph Houghton and veteran midfielder Jill Scott are leading a group of women with very raw, very recent memories of how close they came to England’s first World Cup final since 1966, and who now stand on that precipice again.

As Bronze persuasively said on Monday: “Who better to know what it takes?”