Going out to the World Cup there will be pressure on us as one of the favourites because we’re European champions and that brings its own expectation.
But one thing we know within this England squad is that we have a lot of leaders in the dressing room.
Just look around at the players, the characters and the personalities in the team and you will realise there are voices of experience who have been there, done it and won the Euros.
That alone won’t be enough to lead us to success in Australia and New Zealand, we know that, but we believe we do have the foundations of a very special team – even if it is not exactly the same one that won the trophy at Wembley a year ago.
It’s been very well documented we are without Leah Williamson, the skipper who led us to European glory last summer, after her injury ruled her out of the World Cup, as well as Beth Mead – Golden Boot winner and player of the tournament at the Euros – and Fran Kirby.
But we have been without Beth and Fran for most of the season and as captain, Millie Bright will take on the armband excellently from Leah (pictured) Down Under. Millie is probably the strongest centre-half in world football and has vast experience with her club Chelsea and at international level.
In her and Alex Greenwood, another vastly experienced player who has an amazing left foot, we have two world-class players, while chances could now present themselves for players who were not in our Euros squad such as Laura Coombs, Lauren James, Katie Zelem, Katie Robinson and Jordan Nobbs, who has had such bad luck with being injured for major tournaments in the past.
We also have my Barcelona team-mate Keira Walsh in midfield, who is one of our biggest leaders on the pitch and dictates more of what we do in a game more than anyone else, probably aside from myself.
We do speak about the pressure on us as a group. That’s been the biggest change since last summer, the realisation that we are expected to do well and are among a small group of favourites to win in Australia and New Zealand.
Opinions about how we will do at the tournament seem to be pretty mixed but we won’t pay much attention to that. Missing some key players seems to have changed people’s expectations of us.
Most important for us is the fact we have the confidence of having won the Euros, even if we don’t have Leah, Beth and Fran in the squad this time.
Sarina Wiegman, our manager, keeps us level and the mindset stays the same as it always has. We’ve still only lost one match under Sarina, a friendly against Australia in April when we had a lot of tired legs. Afterwards we said to each other ‘it happens’. That’s football.
We also won Finalissima against Brazil in that period and beat reigning world champions the USA before Leah got injured in the spring.
But losing that unbeaten record maybe rid us of something that was absolutely pointless anyway. It allowed us to focus just on the World Cup after that. These stats – unbeaten runs, goalscoring runs – become irrelevant really.
Speaking of pressure, Australia could be feeling some of that as co-hosts. If people want to call them the favourites for the trophy, that doesn’t change anything for us. I still think you write off the USA at your peril, though. They’ve lost a couple of games in the last year but are still the last team I would write off.
All they care about is winning. It comes down to their mentality going into tournaments. We are ready and not worrying about anyone else, only ourselves, and we are here to try to win the World Cup.
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