Lucy Bronze: 'The Champions League race with Man United has intensified our rivalry'

In her exclusive column for GiveMeSport Women, England and Manchester City superstar Lucy Bronze discusses the end of the season and the race for the final Champions League qualifying spot.

It’s been a season of two halves, both for myself and Manchester City. I didn’t play the first half of the campaign because of injury, which was frustrating, but I’m now back on the pitch and getting better game by game.

Similarly, Manchester City weren’t doing well in the first half of the season, but we’ve since been getting the results we need and picking up points.

We’re arguably one of the most in-form teams in the Women’s Super League right now. We’ve only lost once in 2022, and that was away to Chelsea.

Aside from that, we’ve won the Continental Cup, got to the FA Cup Final and it’s all to play for in terms of Champions League qualification.

I think we’ve done a lot better than people expected back at Christmas, when we were struggling. Now we just have to finish the season with a bang!

Of course, there’s always an increased pressure on players when football goes right down to the wire. It happened to us last season with the title race, and now we’re battling it out with Manchester United for the last Champions League spot.

But we’ve had the same pressure on us since Christmas. We knew we had to win every single game to keep ourselves within touching distance of the top of the table.

It got to the point where we just had to get results, get points on the board no matter what, and we’ve shown we’re capable of doing that. I think that mentality puts us in good stead for the last game of the season.

It’s exciting that the Champions League battle is between City and United. The rivalry might not be as historic as in men’s football,