Lucy Bronze
Lucia Roberta Tough Bronze is an English professional footballer who plays as a right-back for Women's Super League club Chelsea and the England women's national team. She has previously played for Sunderland, Everton, Liverpool, Lyon, Manchester City and Barcelona, as well as North Carolina at college level in the United States and Great Britain at the Olympics. Bronze has won a total of five Champions League titles, three with Lyon and two with Barcelona; four Women's Super League titles, with Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea; and both the Euro 2022 and the Euro 2025 with England.
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 won the Silver Ball at the 2019 World Cup in France, helping England to a fourth-place finish. 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. She has won the PFA Women's Players' Player of the Year award twice – in 2014 and 2017.
In 2018 and 2020, Bronze was named BBC Women's Footballer of the Year. 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 of all time.
Early years and education
Lucia Roberta Tough Bronze was born on 28 October 1991 in Berwick-upon-Tweed to a Portuguese father, Joaquim Bronze, and an English mother, Diane née Tough. The family lived in Faro, Portugal, and only moved back to Lindisfarne the week Bronze was born; she was almost born on the island, but her mother did not want a potential helicopter transfer to hospital. She is British-Portuguese and has an older brother and a younger sister. The siblings, in line with Portuguese naming customs, all took both their parents' surnames; born in England, Bronze has her maternal surname Tough as a middle name in such contexts. They were raised bilingual, though Bronze has said she is not very comfortable when speaking Portuguese. She was very shy when young and would not speak much in general.As a child, she began playing football with her brother and his friends, first playing in Faro. She grew up around the North East, living on Lindisfarne, 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 rules prevented her from continuing with the boys' team when she turned 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 ; 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 on mathematics herself, Bronze received a bronze award in the United Kingdom Mathematics Trust Challenge.
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. 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 worked at a bar and at Domino's Pizza.
Club career
Sunderland
Youth, 2002–07
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, 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.
Senior, 2007–10
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. The next season she helped them win the Northern Division and gain promotion to the National Division. Bronze also started in the 2009 FA Women's Cup Final, being awarded the Player of the Match award in Sunderland's 1–2 loss to Arsenal. After a semester in the United States, Bronze returned to England in December 2009 and was included on the Sunderland squad for initial matches in the National Division.College: North Carolina Tar Heels, 2009
Having been turned down for a Loughborough University programme that accepted girls to play football and study as a teenager, Bronze turned to North Carolina. She had won a scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from coach Anson Dorrance after impressing him during several soccer camps.In the summer of 2009, Bronze moved to Chapel Hill, studying and playing for their soccer team, the Tar Heels, the most successful Division 1 team in the country; during her time there, Bronze said that she did not feel nervous to live up to such a legacy or play in the college championships as she did not really understand it. Originally recruited to play as a true freshman defender and told she would not get many minutes behind more senior players, though with the potential to be a starter in her second year, the season-ending injury suffered by Nikki Washington saw Bronze featured prominently in the midfield for the team. The youngest player on the team, Bronze volunteered to pair-up against senior Tobin Heath in competitive training.
As a starter, Bronze won the ACC tournament, and, in December 2009, became the first British player to win an NCAA Cup after having assisted for the crucial goal in the semi-final and making an important clearance in the final. All-American honours as a midfielder followed for Bronze, who scored three goals and provided four assists in 24 games, with Dorrance saying that she brought a level of polish and savviness from English football to the team and the college writing that she "dominated" in the NCAA tournament for them.
Bronze missed a match in September to train with the youth squad in England, and returned for international training again in December 2009. By this point she had been told by England that if she continued to play in the United States they would not consider her for the national team. During England training, she injured her knee, which then became infected, and she spent much of the next year in a leg brace. She transferred to Leeds Metropolitan University in 2010. She became a "key member" of the Leeds Met university women's football team, which won the BUCS North Premier Division in the 2010–11 year. Some of her North Carolina college teammates were already successful internationals, and Bronze has credited witnessing the "huge spectacle" of women's football in the United States, as well as experiencing the mentality in training there, with inspiring her career.
Everton, 2010–12
, who coached Bronze in England youth squads, offered Bronze a spot on the Everton squad Marley was coaching in the summer of 2010; with Everton, Bronze could play in the newly established Women's Super League, which Sunderland would not be joining. She was named in Everton's UEFA Women's Champions League squad in September 2010 and debuted for the club in a 0–0 draw against MTK in Hungary.For all of her time at Everton, Bronze was recovering from her knee injury; she did not play often, and continued to predominantly work at Domino's. She played in six matches for Everton during the 2011 FA WSL season, starting five of these on the bench. Everton finished in third place in the league, with a record. During the 2012 FA WSL, she started ten of the eleven matches she played. She scored her first Everton goal during a 2–0 win against Liverpool. Everton also finished this season in third place with a record. Bronze spent the two years following her knee surgeries using what she learnt in her sports science degree to create her own rehabilitation plan. Pundit and former player Alex Scott, who played in the same position as Bronze, later said that the years Bronze spent determined to overcome her injury were instrumental in her developing the physical and mental strength to reach the level she has.