England’s ability to find a way to win during the Women’s World Cup has only added to the squad’s belief, Lucy Bronze has said.
The Lionesses edged past Nigeria on penalties in the last 16 and have coped with the loss of key players during matches.
And Bronze believes that Sarina Wiegman’s players have built confidence thanks to the tests they’ve overcome.
“We’re the ones who are still in the competition,” Bronze said.
“There are many top teams who are going home because they haven’t been able to get that win or been able to see the games out – and we have.
“We’ve shown that side of our team and that we know what it takes to win. We have our mentality.
“The belief is huge.”
England, who face Colombia in the quarter-finals on Saturday at 11:30 BST, are favourites to win the Women’s World Cup for the first time after back-to-back champions the USA, Euro 2022 finalists Germany, Olympic gold medallists Canada and South American champions Brazil were all knocked out.
But it has not been an entirely smooth passage for the European champions – midfielder Keira Walsh suffered an injury in the win over Denmark, before forward Lauren James was sent off in the victory against Nigeria.
The red card left Wiegman’s side a player short for more than half an hour but they managed to hang on at 0-0 through extra time to take the game to penalties.
“We’re quite a confident team anyway,” defender Bronze said.
“We had belief in extra time and during the penalties. We know our strengths, we know what we’re capable of and we showed that to the world.
“We can give more. We’re a fantastic team with highly talented players but the important thing is we got through to the next round.
“There’s no point playing our best performances in the first games. We might as well save them for the quarter-finals or further than that.
“We’ve taken something from every game – whether that was the Haiti game that was physical, the Denmark game when we lost our key player [Walsh], the China game where we changed formation completely, and against Nigeria we had a red card.
“Everything that has been thrown at us, we’ve dealt with. I don’t see many other teams who have had that adversity.
“If they have, I don’t think they have managed to overcome it in the way we have.”