Bronze and England on Wembley way
Saturday, November 22, 2014
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"We want it to be seen as a normal thing to play at Wembley," said England defender Lucy Bronze as she looks forward to the sell-out friendly against Germany.
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Until Sunday, England's women had never have played in front of a home crowd of more than 30,000. Their friendly against Germany at Wembley will be watched by a crowd of 55,000, and that is only because ticket sales were stopped a fortnight before the match due to transport issues.
Although Wembley was full to see Great Britain's women face Brazil in the 2012 Olympics, to achieve such ticket sales for an England friendly – nearly doubling the previous record for the opening game of UEFA Women's EURO 2005 – is a huge step forward. Sales were helped, of course, by the superb form of Mark Sampson's side in FIFA Women's World Cup qualifying, not dropping a point, just like Germany.
Lucy Bronze, who this week left Liverpool LFC after two straight league titles to join Manchester City WFC, has emerged as a key player in Sampson's revamped squad which conceded only one goal in their ten qualifiers. Bronze spoke to UEFA.com about the Wembley game and their World Cup ambitions.
UEFA.com: What does it mean to play at Wembley?
Lucy Bronze: It doesn't get any bigger than that. It's a friendly and a warm-up game but we want to win! That's all part of it. Everything that we do is pushing towards the next thing and the next thing is playing at Wembley. People say it is like a reward for how well we have been doing but we don't want to see it as a reward. We want it to be seen as a normal thing to play at Wembley. It's not a gesture.
UEFA.com: How would you assess the qualifying campaign, winning every game?
Bronze: That was what Mark wanted us to do, to make a point. We can compete with anyone on our day – we beat Sweden [4-0 in August], we've beaten the USA in friendlies, we've drawn with Japan, all pretty decent but we always seem to slip up in tournaments.
It's now about making other teams scared of us, so we wanted to qualify with a lot of goals and we didn't want to concede – that's the most disappointing thing that we've conceded one goal in the whole thing. We wanted people to know what we are about. We are playing better football and we are playing better together.
UEFA.com: You went to UEFA Women's EURO 2013 but did not play in what was a disappointing tournament for England ...
Bronze: There are a lot of younger players that were involved in the EURO squad, some of us didn't get playing time but the experience was priceless. I remember at the end of the tournament Kelly Smith came up to me and Jordan [Nobbs] and said: "You have got to take from this experience what you have and make sure it doesn't happen again. You have now got the experience of being somewhere like this."
One of the disappointing things about Sweden was how much backing from the media we got, then we didn't fulfil any kind of expectation at all ... But it does mean we want to show everyone we can win games, we are one of the better teams in Europe and in the top ten in the world.
UEFA.com: How are you looking forward to Canada next summer?
Bronze: The thing about Canada is people support women's football there, in North America in general. They are expecting big crowds so it will be good practice playing at Wembley.
UEFA.com: And the issue of playing on artificial turf, which you did with Liverpool?
Bronze: A lot of players are complaining about it and I can understand why. But [Liverpool] play and train on the turf every day. Their point is it wouldn't happen in the men's game. But in terms of the actual game, you could play on a grass pitch and it could be really muddy, it would be really bobbly, there could be no grass, it could be really dry.
You get a lot of issues with that in grass, and if you have a slide tackle on a grass pitch you are going to get burns like you would on turf. The only difference is it is harder on turf and you do get certain injuries but Liverpool have medical backing to sort those issues out in training in specific ways. For me personally, I would prefer to play on grass but do I mind if it is on astroturf? Not really.