England Survive Bruising Colombia Test To Reach Women's World Cup Semi-Finals

England fought back from a goal down to beat Colombia 2-1 on Saturday in a bruising encounter and set up a tasty Women's World Cup semi-final with Australia. Arsenal forward Alessia Russo scored the winner for the European champions just after the hour in front of 75,000 in Sydney to end Colombia's run in the tournament. Earlier in the day, co-hosts Australia beat France 7-6 in a thrilling penalty shootout in Brisbane to reach the last four for the first time in their history.

The semi-final will be in Sydney on Wednesday.

Colombia, playing in their first quarter-final, took the lead against the run of play through a wonderful dipping effort from the edge of the box by Leicy Santos on 44 minutes.

But England struck back deep in first-half stoppage time when Lauren Hemp pounced on a goalkeeping error by a fumbling Catalina Perez, before Russo sealed the quarter-final in the Lionesses' favour with her cool finish.

Colombia have been one of the best-supported teams at the tournament and their fans dominated at Stadium Australia, their yellow shirts vastly outnumbering England supporters.

Colombia are ranked 25 in the world to England's four and they were clear underdogs, even if they did beat Germany in the group phase.

Sarina Wiegman's England were missing potent attacker Lauren James, banned for two games for stamping on an opponent in the win on penalties over Nigeria in the last 16.

But they made the better start and Colombia suffered an early blow when defender Carolina Arias was forced off after 10 minutes when she was injured during an England attack.

Jeers went up each time the Lionesses had the ball but they seemed to be enjoying themselves and finding pockets of space in front of the Colombian defence with ease.

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