Lucy Bronze

Lucia Roberta Tough Bronze (born 28 October 1991) is an English professional footballer who plays as a right-back for Liga F club Barcelona and the England women's national team.

She has previously played for Sunderland, Everton, Liverpool, Lyon and Manchester City as well as North Carolina at college level in the United States and Great Britain at the Olympics.

Bronze has won a total of four Champions League titles, three with Lyon and one with Barcelona; three Women's Super League titles, with Liverpool and Manchester City, and the Euro 2022 with England.

Lucia Roberta Tough Bronze was born on 28 October 1991 in Berwick-upon-Tweed by the Anglo-Scottish border in North East England to a Portuguese father, Joaquim Bronze, and an English mother, Diane née Tough.

She is British-Portuguese and has two siblings: an older brother, Jorge, who was born in Portugal, and younger sister, Sophie.

They were raised bilingual, though Bronze has said she is not very comfortable when speaking Portuguese.

She was very shy as a child and wouldn't speak much in general.

As an infant, she began playing football with her brother and his friends, first playing in Faro.

She grew up around the North East, living on Lindisfarne (Holy Island, where her grandmother was caretaker of Lindisfarne Castle), in Belford, and in Alnwick.

Having played football for Belford, Bronze joined Alnwick Town when young and stayed with them to the under-11 level, but Football Association (FA) rules prevented her from continuing with the boys' team when she would turn twelve.

In the Alnwick juniors squad, Bronze was the best player on the team, picking up six "man of the match" awards from eight games; the manager was so intent for her to continue playing when she turned twelve that he helped open a discrimination case against the FA in the hopes they would allow an exception.

They did not, but did set a target to support more girls' football teams in rural Northern areas as an alternative solution.

After winning the UEFA Women's Euro 2022, a plaque honouring Bronze as part of the "Where Greatness Is Made" campaign was installed at the Alnwick Town ground.

Bronze attended the Duchess's Community High School in Alnwick with middle-distance runner Laura Weightman and future England teammate Lucy Staniforth.

Here, she played as a midfielder and was the captain in football, as well as taking part in numerous other team sports, including captaining the tennis and hockey teams (being county champion at least once in all three); her mother encouraged Bronze to pursue tennis rather than football, but began supporting her ambitions after she was told by the FA she could no longer play for a boys' team.

Though preferring team sports, Bronze took part in many others, including reaching the national finals in cross country and pentathlon, and at one point aiming to go to the Olympic Games as an 800 metres runner.

Her mother is a maths teacher and, keen in mathematics herself, Bronze received a Bronze award in the United Kingdom Mathematics Trust Challenge.

No longer able to play for Alnwick, Bronze began attending summer training camps in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, something her mother had discovered when looking for opportunities for her to continue to play football, and playing for Sunderland, first at under-12 academy level, from 2002.

Though the nearest girls' team to Alnwick, it was still several hours away, and Bronze has said between school and training she had no time for anything else.

The travel was draining and Bronze was shy going to Sunderland, so when she was old enough (the option of playing above her age group was also referred to the FA and denied), she played for Blyth Town WFC, a closer side that had an under-14 girls' team in the Northern Girls Tyne Tees League.

She continued training with Sunderland, though less regularly, including at under-15 level.

She was the captain of Sunderland's under-16 team, but still played for Blyth Town at this age.

At Blyth Town, Bronze started out as a striker, with Staniforth saying that Bronze was a special player, that "all I'd have to do was kick the ball over to her and she would bully everyone out the way and stick it in the goal."

Bronze then began playing at Sunderland as a midfielder, but was pushed into the back line when Jordan Nobbs, a natural 'number 8', joined the team.

She then played as a left-back in the youth squads, basing her game on idol David Beckham.

Bronze joined the Sunderland senior team when she turned 16 in 2007.

In 2007–08, Bronze was named Manager's Player of the Year as Sunderland finished third in the FA Women's Premier League Northern Division.

When she was seventeen, in 2009, Bronze finished sixth form a year early and moved to North Carolina to study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and play for the Tar Heels women's soccer team at college level.

Bronze represented England from under-17 level and has been part of the senior national team at every major tournament since the Euro 2013, having first captained them in 2018.

She returned to England after a year, transferring to Leeds Metropolitan University to continue her sports science degree, graduating in 2013.

She wrote her dissertation on ACL injuries in women's sport.

At Leeds, she had to take jobs working at a bar and at Domino's Pizza to support herself.

She has won the PFA Women's Players' Player of the Year award twice – in 2014 and 2017.

Bronze was named to the All-Star Squads at the 2015 World Cup in Canada, in which England finished third, as well as the Euro 2017 in the Netherlands and the 2019 World Cup.

In 2018 and 2020, Bronze was named BBC Women's Footballer of the Year.

She won the Silver Ball at the 2019 World Cup in France, helping England to a fourth-place finish.

In 2019, she became the first English footballer to win the UEFA Women's Player of the Year Award, and won the inaugural Globe Soccer Award for the Women's Best Player.

Bronze was named The Best FIFA Women's Player in December 2020.

She is regarded as one of the best players in women's football, with Phil Neville having described her as undoubtedly the "best player in the world".

Men in Blazers listed her as one of the 100 best footballers (men and women) of all time.