‘Many people said England would flop’: Lucy Bronze is confident the Lionesses can progress to the World Cup final despite the semi-final curse

Lucy Bronze says England have the fight and the experience to make it to the World Cup final after overcoming their hoodoo in the semi-finals at last summer’s European Championship.

The Lionesses had lost three semi-finals in a row – including the 2015 and 2019 World Cups – before beating Sweden 4-0 at Euro 2022.

England beat Colombia 2-1 to set up a semi-final with Australia and Bronze, who have played in the last two World Cups, are confident the Lionesses can use their past experience to progress to the final .

“We got over that hurdle at the European Championships last year and finally made it to the final and got past the dreaded semi-final defeat, so we’ve got that covered,” said Bronze.

“If we hadn’t made it to the semi-finals, I would have said we underperformed.

“A lot of people said England was the team that was going to flop a bit.

“Our performance was not our best, admittedly, but the results are there and we have the semi-finals, which this English team is known for.

“It (this tournament) reminds me a lot of 2015, where I had to fight in every match.

“I think the difference with this team is: we’ve won trophies, we’ve won tournaments, so we know what to do. We knew when we started the tournament that it wasn’t going to be easy.

“There was a lot of outside noise about whether England could handle everything that has been thrown at us so far and the semi-final is what is expected of us as the England team.

A peak audience of 7.2 million tuned in to watch England’s quarter-final on ITV, while the BBC will show the semi-final against Australia on Wednesday.