With just 150 permanent residents, growing up there can put you at a slight remove from the rest of the north-east. Many years ago, Lucy Bronze was among them, which may help to explain her readiness to spend so much of the peak of her career at a distance.
Bronze won three Champions League titles in France (Photo: Getty)
That would soon change. It was not her first stint abroad or her last – she attended college in North Carolina, playing for the university’s Tar Heels team and later joined Barcelona – but it was her most successful. She would go on to win the Champions League three times, alongside three French titles and another three cups.
“I just like when I play against a team where I’ve lived because I know what they’re saying,” Bronze laughs.
It is a match-up that ordinarily would have pitted Bronze against a long-term friend and former colleague in Wendie Renard. Then came the bombshell from France’s squad announcement: the legendary centre-back was being left at home.
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“She’s the epitome of what I would describe as a captain figure. When I was at Lyon, everything she did as a person and as a player, there was nothing you could fault. I’m sure she’d be devastated not to be part of the Euros, knowing what she’s like.
Are France weaker without Renard? Perhaps, but Bronze would rather test herself against the best.
There will be familiar faces aplenty, nonetheless. Bronze describes Griedge Mbock Bathy as her favourite centre-back to play alongside. Some, like Selma Bacha and Alice Sombath, were teenagers when she left France, but she rates the former as “one of the best left-backs in the world”.
Of Sombath, she insists: “As much as she’s inexperienced in terms of caps for France and her age, she’s been in and around a very successful Lyon team for seven years. She’s probably got more maturity than I guess people might give her credit for.”
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None of this was inevitable. It is easily forgotten that this is a full-back who snapped her knee on her first day of training as an England U19. She was told she could have lost a leg.
Four years on, Lyon handpicked her off the back of a superb spell at Manchester City and turned her into a Ballon d’Or nominee and the Women’s Player of the Year – the first defender to win the award.
Now it is something she is learning to embrace. She is in a unique position in this England side, a French-speaker who plays for a French manager (Sonia Bompastor) and on Saturday, she could well come up against her Chelsea teammate, winger Sandy Baltimore. She already has a plan to deal with her.
“I already knew who she was before because she was at PSG. I used to play against her at Lyon. She’s a very talented dribbler of the ball, really good left foot, good pace, and someone that I know quite well.”
In her seventh major tournament overall, the Euros has come to know Lucy Bronze well too. But in an England squad with seven tournament debutants, she remains timeless.
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