England face the world champions USA – but that fear factor has gone

Welcome to Moving the Goalposts, the Guardian’s free women’s football newsletter. Here’s an extract from this week’s edition. To receive the full version once a week, just pop your email in below:

When England welcome the USA to Wembley on Friday night we are in for a treat. It is a great match-up and a great opportunity for England to get a measure of where they are, even if everything doesn’t go to plan against the world champions. Of course, they’ll want to win, but draw or lose and there is time, before the World Cup kicks off next summer, to say: “OK, we’ve got time, let’s work on this.”

I’m fortunate enough to have played against the USA at international level with England and to have played alongside many brilliant members of the US women’s national team at club level in the States.

When I played against them there was 100% a fear factor there. There was such a high level of respect for what they’d achieved as a nation in the sport. They were the elite. They were the pioneers. In our game, they were the ones leading the charge and everyone else had to try and catch up and match it.

In the quarter-final of the 2007 World Cup in China we lost 3-0. It was always a really tough game against the USA. They had so many good internationals and such a wide pool of talent. We were competing against players who had more resources available to them while we were amateurs, working hard to try to compete on a physical level. That was always our priority, trying to get as fit as we could to match the intensity of their game.

Even then they were household names. Heather O’Reilly, Carli Lloyd, Christie Rampone, Kristine Lilly – the media would reference players like those and that built the intimidation. They had so much more