Given the extent to which women’s football is still in its relative infancy the second time around, it is actually quite unusual to find a player that you might refer to as a ‘journeywoman’ in the game. Not many players have been playing long enough to have several different clubs on their list of teams, often remaining with one or two clubs for most of their career. That isn’t the case with Lucy Bronze, however, who had played for six teams in her senior career before signing for Chelsea. In fact, there is significantly more to say about her life before she arrived at the Blues than there is to say about her time in a Chelsea shirt.
Who is Lucy Bronze?
Boasting the amazing full name of Lucia Roberta Tough Bronze, the woman who became known as Lucy Bronze was born on the 28th of October 1991 in the English town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. With a Portuguese father, Joaquim, and an English mother, Diane, she is classed as British-Portuguese and has an older brother and a younger sister. Raised bilingual, Bronze was shy as a child and tended not to speak much but began playing football with her brother and his friends when she was just an infant. Her grandmother was a caretaker for Lindisfarne Castle, meaning that she grew up there, as well as in Belford and Alnwick.
Getting into Football
As a young girl, Lucy Bronze played football for her local team in Belford before joining Alnwick Town, remaining with them until the Under-11 group. Football Association rules at the time, archaic as they have been over the years, meant that she was no longer allowed to remain in the boy’s team once she turned 12. The Alnwick Town manager at the time helped her to open a discrimination case against the FA, but they still refused to allow her to stay on, instead making hollow gestures such as a promise that they would invest more in rural Northern areas. She took part in a summer camp at Chapel Hill North Carolina instead.
In 2002 she was signed up to play with the Sunderland Academy, but it was far to travel so as soon as she was old enough she signed up to play for Blyth Town’s Women’s Football Club. She still trained with Sunderland every now and then, eventually signing to play for the senior team once she had turned 16. She was named the club’s Manager’s Player of the Year at the end of the 2007-2008 campaign, helping them gain promotion the following season and earning the Player of the Match award as Sunderland lost 2-1 to Arsenal in the 2009 FA Women’s Cup. She then spent a semester in the US before returning to Sunderland.
Becoming a Professional
Having impressed whilst playing for the Tar Heels in North Carolina in the summer of 2009, Bronze returned to Sunderland before being offered a place on the Everton squad that Mo Marley, her former youth coach with England, offered her. It allowed her to play in the newly established Women’s Super League, which the Black Cats were not going to be playing in, but she didn’t get many games on account of the fact that she spent most of her time at Everton recovering from a knee injury. She did score in the Merseyside derby as Everton won 2-0 against their city rivals, which might well have been part of the reason she caught their eye.
In the November of 2012, Bronze departed Everton to sign for Liverpool. She was the third player to make such a move after both Natasha Dowie and Tara Williams had also swapped blue for red. Part of the reason for that was that Liverpool had become England’s first full-time women’s club, as well as the better medical support and superior training that she thought she’d get. It proved to be an inspired decision, with Liverpool winning the Women’s Super League in both 2013 and 2014, starting all of the games in the latter campaign as the Reds posted a record of seven wins, five draws and just two defeats with Bronze in defence.
Getting European Experience
In the November of 2014, Lucy Bronze decided to sign for Manchester City, saying that the club offered resource equality alongside the men that was ‘unheard of’. In 2016, the Cityzens went unbeaten for the entire season, conceding just four goals along the way and winning their second WSL Cup in the space of three years. She was named the Women’s Super League 1 Player’s Player of the Year. The following year, Bronze was named the PFA Players’ Player of the Year for the second time, winning the FA Women’s Cup before being put on the shortlist for the UEFA Women’s Player of the Year and the FIFA Best Women’s Player.
Lucy Bronze, winner of the PFA Women’s Players’ Player of the Year in association with Sodexo talks about her prize #PFAawards pic.twitter.com/g1pKl1LwBE
— Professional Footballers’ Association (@PFA) April 23, 2017
In spite of the fact that she had enjoyed clear success whilst playing for Manchester City, winning numerous silverware and gaining wider recognition, they were ‘quite erratic’ years and it was felt that she didn’t hit the heights that she had enjoyed with Liverpool. As a result, Bronze signed a three-year deal with Lyon in the August of 2017, going on to win the UEFA Goal of the Season award for a goal she scored against Manchester City on the way to Lyon winning the Women’s Champions League. It ended up being a double alongside the Division 1 Féminine, with Lyon losing the final of the Coupe de France to Paris Saint-Germain.
She continued to win more silverware with Lyon, including another Division 1 Féminine title and the reclamation of the Coupe de France. In the International Champions Cup, meanwhile, the French side defeated North Carolina Courage thanks to a goal from Bronze. Such were her exploits that she finished as the runner-up for the Women’s Ballon d’Or in 2019, whilst The Guardian voted her as the second best player in their 100 Best list. A new trophy in the form of the Trophée des Championnes was created for the 2019-2020 season, which Lyon won at the expense of PSG, with Lyon also winning the Champions League again.
Catching Chelsea’s Eye
Having achieved what she had achieved with Lyon, Bronze left France to re-sign for Manchester City on the eighth of September 2020, signing a two-year deal. Her return to the Cityzens did not start as well as she’d hoped, being beset by injury. Prior to the start of the 2021-2022 season, Bronze underwent another knee operation that restricted her play until the start of 2022. She won the League Cup with Manchester City that season, but the player confirmed that she would leave the club at the end of her contract after tensions with the manager about her role in the team. As a result, she signed for Barcelona in the June of 2022.
Having enjoyed playing abroad, Bronze wanted to take the opportunity to sign for a club as renowned as the Catalan giants. She was registered as a Portuguese player on account of the fact that there was confusion about how many non-EU players could play for the Spanish side that season. The training was seen as a ‘level up’ from what she’d experience at Lyon, which paid off when she won her first title with the club on the 22nd of January 2023. She suffered a knee injury during a Champions League against Chelsea, requiring her to be taken off but doing enough to catch the eye of the London club’s backroom team.
Signing for Chelsea
On the 30th of April 2023, Barcelona won the league again. The following season, however, a youth product from the Barcelona Academy, Ona Batlle, began to play more games for the club. Although she started out on the left, she was naturally a right-back and so it seemed as though the writing was on the wall for Bronze. Even so, the English player remained influential, helping Barcelona to once again win the Women’s Champions League alongside another three titles in what was a perfect season. In doing so, she had become the first female English player to win five Champions League titles.
Ultimately, though, Bronze realised that she didn’t really have a future with Barcelona. Instead, she made the decision to sign a two-year deal with Chelsea on the 17th of July 2024. This allowed her to return to the Women’s Super League, whilst Bronze confirmed that she wanted to win the Champions League with an English team and believed that could so with the Blues. Het first goal for the club came on the 27th of September in an away game against Crystal Palace. Chelsea won the match by a resounding scoreline of 7-0, with Lucy Bronze scoring the second three minutes after the start of the second-half.