Lucy Bronze: England and Lyon star named BBC Women's Footballer of the Year for the second time

Winner: The accolades are stacking up for England right-back Lucy Bronze
Getty Images
George Flood24 March 2020

England defender Lucy Bronze has been named as the BBC Women's Footballer of the Year for the second time since 2018.

The 28-year-old was revealed as the winner of the 2020 prize on Tuesday morning, seeing off competition from a star-studded field that also included Ballon d'Or winner Megan Rapinoe and fellow USA world champion Julie Ertz as well as Arsenal striker Vivianne Miedema and Chelsea's Sam Kerr.

She received the award at home in Manchester after being surprised with a video call featuring former team-mate Alex Scott, brother Jorge and Lyon's Shanice van de Sanden, with the football world currently in shutdown due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Bronze was a key member of the England team that reached the semi-finals of the 2019 World Cup in France last summer and was pipped to the Golden Ball and Ballon' d'Or awards by Rapinoe.

However, she was voted Uefa Player of the Year - the first English footballer to receive that honour - and helped Lyon to continue their dominant run at club level, sealing a treble of trophies including a domestic French double and the Champions League.

"Winning a trophy twice is special because it's so much harder," Bronze told the BBC World Service.

"I look at the list of nominees for this award - before the public didn't maybe know as much about the players - and now I think: 'Everybody knows who these girls are.

"That's definitely pretty special. Things have changed so much since the World Cup, and next year with a home Euros it's something that can change even more and get even bigger, especially for us in England.

"In the past two years I've changed so much as a person and a leader. I'd like to think my football has improved a bit - but as a person I've grown up a lot. I'm coming up to 30 so I have to.

"When I was younger I just wanted to play and win, but now I'm taking on a bigger role to help the team win at England and Lyon."

Bronze was not a member of Phil Neville's experimental England squad that recently missed out on retaining their SheBelieves Cup title in the USA, with the former Manchester City right-back forced to withdraw as the result of a calf injury.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in