England defender Lucy Bronze is drawing on the expertise of her first World Cup eight years in the past to allay fears that the Lionesses didn’t play like favourites of their 1-0 opening victory towards Haiti in Brisbane.
That win, sealed by Georgia Stanway’s twice-taken penalty towards a facet 49 locations beneath England within the FIFA rankings, prolonged the Lionesses’ streak with no objective from open play to three video games, together with their 0-0 behind-closed-doors pre-tournament coaching match with Canada.
Bronze made her World Cup debut on the 2015 event, the place England fell to France of their opener however in the end completed up with the third-place medal for his or her best-ever end in a worldwide showpiece.
She stated: “Effectively, in my first World Cup we misplaced the primary sport and ended ending third. There’s solely a lot you’ll be able to take from the sport. Crucial factor is it offers us momentum but it surely’s higher than having to chase factors and we get to give attention to the following two video games.
“We’re taking part in towards gamers we’ve by no means performed earlier than. It takes a short time to get into these video games. As soon as we received going you noticed England coming again to life once more. We’d like to try this extra for longer.”
Bronze had little doubt Stanway would step up to the spot twice on Saturday, after her preliminary penalty was saved by Haiti’s 5ft 4in goalkeeper Kerly Theus.
That may have left Stanway with a profession report of six penalties scored and two missed, however she was given one other likelihood after the referee dominated Theus had come off her line.
Bronze had full religion in Stanway to put the ball behind the online together with her second alternative, which the Bayern Munich midfielder did handily.
She stated: “I don’t assume anybody doubted that Georgia would take it. We simply picked it up and gave it to her. She doesn’t want any encouragement to try this. Georgia shouldn’t be the kind of participant that wants telling what to do or is missing confidence. All of us knew {that a} second likelihood was sufficient for her to bury it.”
England, who’ve now checked into their World Cup base on the New South Wales’ Central Coast, subsequent face world quantity 13 Denmark on Friday in Sydney earlier than taking over 14th-placed China in Adelaide to conclude the group stage, with the highest two groups advancing to the final 16.
Bronze’s team-mate Alessia Russo, who on Saturday was favoured for the centre-forward function by Sarina Wiegman over Girls’s Tremendous League Golden Boot winner Rachel Daly, was one of many solely England gamers to admit their first half towards Haiti regarded a bit rusty.
She stated: “Yeah, I feel so. Us as gamers are the primary to recognise that. We’ll be again to coaching this week and coaching laborious to push on now however tournaments are all the time about profitable and that’s a very powerful factor.
“I don’t assume I ever fear about objectives and profitable with this staff. I feel we’ve received a really particular gifted squad and I do know that individuals present up on the proper occasions.
“The primary sport, we’ve been build up to it for a very long time. It’s performed now, three factors below the belt. Now we actually push on. Moments had been good and we’ll mirror on it, we’ll analyse and we’ll be prepared for Denmark.”
