Millie Bright credits England’s ‘ruthless’ mentality in stunning Spain victory

Millie Bright hailed England’s “unbelievable” mentality to fight back from a goal behind to clinch an extra-time winner in the Euro 2022 quarter-final against Spain.

The tournament hosts’ future in the competition had been threatened when Esther Gonzalez’s 54th minute goal handed Spain the lead before Ella Toone took the game to extra time with an equaliser with six minutes of normal time remaining.

Georgia Stanway then made it a night the 28,994 fans in the crowd would remember by firing a stunner in extra time to send England into the semi-finals in a fourth successive major tournament.

“I think that everyone can see the talent of the Spanish team and can see what they have to offer in the game and we knew that we wouldn’t have the ball that much,” Bright, who was voted player of the match, said after the win.

“I think our mentality to stay ruthless throughout every minute of the game was unbelievable and I think we showed what we were about.”

Lionesses manager Sarina Wiegman returned to the dugout for the clash having missed the final group game against Northern Ireland after testing positive for Covid-19.

It was only confirmed that Wiegman would be in the dugout in the afternoon of the quarter-final, and she admitted the emotions were running high after the match.

“I think I went a little crazy,” the head coach admitted.

“I was so happy, of course you try to stay calm but this was so close and was such a close game that could go both ways all the time, so I was so happy that we won.”

She added: “I think we showed resilience so we went behind and then from the 80th minute we changed a little shape and we scored a goal real quickly so we could go back to the shape and in extra time in the moment that we scored we were