Play until you can't
Lucy Bronze embodies the spirit which this England team are self-consciously touting at this tournament – doing it on your own terms.
I felt relaxed at half time of England's EURO 2025 quarter-final against Sweden on Thursday night, the Lionesses having conceded two early, easy goals and still yet to put together any serious attempt at pulling one back.
I had felt sick for most of England's close shave against Nigeria in the 2023 World Cup – without any deficit, even before Lauren James saw red. Sick with impatience, needing brilliance and despairing when that didn't materialise from the first minute.
But after four years of Sarina Wiegman's England, I've learnt to trust that this team won't roll over, that their resilience is sturdy and that the boss always has something up her sleeve.
So I decided that I would give myself until the 75th minute to panic this time, with Sweden showing no interest in extending their 2-0 lead, and 15 minutes being adequate to score two goals. One goal would be followed by a second, as would surely have happened against France had Keira Walsh halved Les Bleues' lead five minutes sooner.
When the 75th minute came around and England didn't look loads closer to scoring, calm turned to agony – the simultaneous wishes for the match both to be over and to go on longer, the regret for having got involved in all this, having believed in something, that paralysing sense that nothing you ever experience is actually under your control... in some ways it was business as usual for a football fan, but you never get any better at dealing with that pain.
So much of tournament football is romanticising, a fantasy – if this, then that, shoulda, woulda, coulda. The impending 2-0 defeat was no way to leave a competition, playing badly and suffering the consequence.
I trusted these Lionesses, and they were letting me down. Weary from what I could see, I'd forgotten what I couldn't – Wiegman, following her plan, and players readying themselves on the sidelines.
This had been the hallmark of the 2022 European Champions, the vital first goals against Spain and Germany having both been scored by a substitute, namely one Ella Toone. I'd confused Toone's relative quietness against Sweden as an indicator of things going wrong, failing to remember that the person playing the role of Toone was taking one final glance over her lines from the bench.
EURO debutant Michelle Agyemang's equaliser echoed that Toone tap-in against Spain – another moment where it felt like all was lost.
I watched England's excruciating EURO 2022 quarter-final at the Brudenell in Leeds with some old Leeds Hyde Park teammates three summers ago. I remember feeling frustrated that my pals were more interested in each other than England's poor performance in the first half, casting my eyes around the room for someone to reassure me that this wasn't going to be the end of the road and finding everyone deep in some other kinds of conversation. Via Instagram I watched those same pals' raucous relief when Agyemang levelled things, and it felt like a marker of how expectations have changed. England are supposed to win quarter-finals and we are supposed to hurt when they make that look difficult.
What else has changed? After just three black players had bit-part roles in EURO 2022, to have Agyemang be the hero was amazing and it will have inspired many kids who saw so little of themselves in previous iterations of the England squad.
The internet was loving the straight representation, too, Chloe Kelly strapping a photo of a wedding day smooch with her husband onto her shin before coming on to assist both of the Lionesses' comeback goals. Gammons would say a man's touch was needed in that shootout, a horrific advertisement for women's football which, bizarrely, former chief football reporter at the Telegraph Henry Winter chose to lead with in his coverage of his event rather than, say, the individual brilliance of Agyemang, Kelly, or Lucy Bronze.
Winter went on to praise the Lionesses for saving the NHS on account of the knock-on impact that inspiring physical activity will have on obesity levels in this country, all this framed in a 'why you should give a shit' manner for his (presumably) stubbornly unbothered audience. It's not an irrelevant point to make, but it speaks to how political the Lionesses' mere existence remains – that their impact should be judged on the merits of their societal impact over and above their capacity to speak the universal language of sporting drama.
Meanwhile, I've chosen to lead with some broad-brush spot the difference regarding this England team and previous ones, since the emotional overwhelm of the occasion kiboshed much of my capacity to pay close attention to what was happening.
You can try and catch up on highlights, but England's determination caused the game to run so long that a six-minute package can only define the game by its four normal-time goals and all the penalties the two teams didn't score (and the few that they did).
I relaxed again when Magda Eriksson hit the post to give England a second chance after James' too-cool penalty threw away the advantage. "Nerves are your body's way of preparing you" is the mantra I use ahead of a performance or interview and, for once, LJ's innate calm did the Lionesses a disservice. Grace Clinton had the opposite problem, rushing to get it over with, but England, unbelievably, were given yet more chances.
Penalties are a bad way to decide who stays and who goes, not least as an untrue measure of footballing superiority, but also for the suffering inflicted on those with skin in the game.
But I would've felt ok seeing England lose in this way, falling on the wrong side of fate rather than failing to recover from two ugly goals. Clinton's weak penalty would leave a finer sour taste than the sogginess of the Lionesses' passing. Think, too, of fans of the Swedes who forced those mistakes, beginning the match with such bite before leaving empty-handed.
"Are you not entertained?" Lucy Bronze asked her Instagram followers after the match. I had been. I imagine I was just one of plenty of England fans with a closer eye on the 'straight-forward' semi-final against Italy than the challenge that came first. Surrendering this 'easy' route to the final would've been a huge miss – but by the end of extra time, the work was already done. I had been entertained and I had been inspired by an England team not giving up.
Would it have been right if I had led my coverage of this game, as I wanted to, with Lucy Bronze renewing her rights to legend status with that back-post header and her 100km/hour penalty? We could build her statue today, but Bronze is still a long way from setting down her legacy – if she's interested at all in doing so.
While Ellen White and Jill Scott chose to seal theirs with a high-point, retiring after England lifted the EURO 2022 trophy, you sense that Bronze won't be defined by such moments. She prefers to play on, even as nay-sayers decry her declining pace and oft-chaotic defending.
After all, it's me who puts all this story onto her actions. Me who framed her poor performance vs Spain as her 'last chance to win a World Cup!', me who zeroed in on her sinking to the floor as the Netherlands snatched England's spot at Paris 2024.
Behind all that chatter is just a guy who likes kicking balls. Is Bronze so bogged down with the narrative? Her mandate seems blissfully simple: keep playing football. Entertain. Enjoy. So long as she can, she will.
The image of her strapping up of her own leg reminds us that she came from a world where players were given next to nothing and had to do it all for themselves. It's why she'll not take any of it for granted.
At every major tournament, for as long as I can remember, the chances of England's men's team have been overestimated. Meanwhile, for much of that time, the Lionesses have been completely disregarded. I have to find this funny or else I'll cry.
I think what makes Lucy Bronze so compelling is that she embodies the spirit which this England team are self-consciously touting at this tournament – that you don't throw the towel in when someone underestimates you. You do it on your own terms.