LUCY BRONZE, ONE OF THE ALL-TIME BEST FOOTBALLERS

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Lucy Bronze, the English professional footballer, who was born on a day like today in 1991.

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 three UEFA Women's Champions League titles with Lyon and one with Barcelona. She has also won three FA Women's Super League titles, with Liverpool and Manchester City. With England, she won the UEFA Women's Euro 2022.

Bronze represented England from under-17 level before being named in the full national squad at Euro 2013; not playing, she has represented England at every major tournament since, and first captained them in 2018. She won the Silver Ball at the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup in France, helping England to a fourth-place finish.

She was named to the All-Star Squads at the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup in Canada, in which England finished third, as well as the UEFA Women's 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 has been described as the best player in the world, and is widely considered to be one of the all-time best players in women's football. Men in Blazers listed her as one of the 100 best footballers (men and women) of all time.

More information: Twitter-Lucy Bronze

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.

A tactically versatile right-back often deployed as an inverted full-back, Bronze has been compared to players of her position in Pep Guardiola's Bayern Munich, particularly Philipp Lahm.

Bronze demonstrates excellent skill in the full-back role, with stamina and speed down the wing, and the ability to play crosses into the box as well as make overlapping runs with her forward winger.

Her tackles are usually perfectly-timed, and she has an exceptionally high rate of winning aerial duels. She has good numbers of interceptions and recoveries. Beyond these skills, Bronze also has creative play; when unable to find a pass, she can dribble past opposition defenders and will do so in the box as well as down the wing.

Correspondingly, she is aggressive off the ball, making it hard for opposition to dribble past her. Her speed and reading of the game allow her to force opposition wingers into weaker positions through her body positioning, as well as enabling her to make late tackles and clearances when the opposition get close to goal.

Bronze's positioning of choice on the wing can be very close to the touchline, widening her team's formation and often forcing the opposition full-back to either fully commit to marking her, leaving a larger space behind, or to be hesitant enough that Bronze is given space herself. When aiming to intercept, she can use her reading of the game to time movements to prevent spaces she leaves being exploited, while still able to arrive at the ball ahead of its target.

Contributing as much to her team's attack as its defense, Bronze often moves into the position of the right winger during the course of play or makes underlapping runs into interior space, allowing her to receive the ball from wingers pinned wide by opposition defenders.

Beyond her role as right-back, she often plays as an inverted full-back, taking positions in both central defense and the midfield, roles she can play naturally or temporarily when moving in from the full-back position to overload the middle or cover for other players that have moved forward to attack.

Moving into the middle as an inverted right-back also allows her to continue playing defensively further up the pitch, gaining possession and aiding her team's counter-attack.

In attack, Bronze is a goalscoring threat from set pieces off corner kicks and free kicks, is noted for ambitious runs into the box when not occupied, and has a high success rate in crossing the ball into the box for assists. She can also shoot with power from distance.

In the midfield she may offer herself as a passing option to other midfielders, or exploit space they have created to move the ball forward.

Bronze was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to association football.

More information: Instagram-Lucy Bronze

You cannot win a game of football on your own;
it's about the entire squad working together
to achieve something.
That's how football works:
it has always been about the group,
not the individual.

Lucy Bronze