{"id":753663,"date":"2026-08-29T15:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T15:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/753663\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T15:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T15:02:11","slug":"now-is-a-good-time-for-players-to-speak-up-lucy-bronze-on-fifa-and-helping-refugees-lucy-bronze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/753663\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Now is a good time for players to speak up\u2019: Lucy Bronze on Fifa and helping refugees | Lucy Bronze"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lucy Bronze does not stop. Her brain runs a hundred miles a minute. She does not need traditional entertainment. \u201cI\u2019m not good at watching TV \u2013 I can\u2019t sit still,\u201d Bronze says, sitting sort-of still, on a bench shielded from the wind, overlooking Chelsea\u2019s training pitch at Cobham. \u201cSomeone recently asked me what I listen to in the car and someone else jumped in and was like: \u2018Lucy has her own podcast going on in her own head.\u2019 I don\u2019t listen to music, I don\u2019t listen to podcasts, I just have a million thoughts going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bronze\u2019s late ADHD and autism diagnosis<\/a> help it make sense, but her mum had always suspected she might have one of the conditions, so it wasn\u2019t a surprise. \u201cNaomi Girma said to me: \u2018I\u2019ve never met someone who trains so hard in the gym with zero music on; it does not make sense.\u2019 I was like: \u2018It\u2019s literally in my head, I don\u2019t need anything else.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Walking her dog, Nala, is the main thing Bronze does to relax, but otherwise she is \u201cjust involved in so many things, different businesses, PFA boards, stuff for Fifpro and Uefa at the minute. There\u2019s obviously a lot going on behind the scenes and I\u2019m just keeping up to date with things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThings like that\u201d are hugely rewarding and Bronze gets pleasure out of elements that could seem tedious but contribute to the wider game and its growth. \u201cI love growing-the-game stuff, but it\u2019s emotionally draining as well,\u201d she says. \u201cMyself and Kim Little are on the PFA players\u2019 board and we speak to each other a lot. We\u2019re in quite similar positions as older players who\u2019ve lived so much of the game and want to give so much back and we feel like we\u2019ve got so many great ideas to help so many people and that there\u2019s so much to be done but you just want to do it all tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes you\u2019ve just got to keep pushing and pushing but I do enjoy it and I feel like I\u2019ve got endless energy so it does help that I\u2019ve got like all these different avenues to push myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recently, that has involved being vocal about Gianni Infantino\u2019s rogue and scuppered plan<\/a> to sell off the World Cup, and his tenure as Fifa president. At the start of the month the defender backed the threat of a European boycott of Fifa competitions, regardless of what it meant for her football ambitions, telling the New Zealand Herald: \u201cIt\u2019s for the future of the game and not just for me today and tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a press conference on Tuesday before Chelsea\u2019s 5-2 victory over Real Sociedad<\/a> in the first leg of their Champions League qualifier, Bronze explained why she had shared the social media post of the former France defender Mika\u00ebl Silvestre, who is on Fifa\u2019s players\u2019 voice panel, which said \u201cchange is necessary\u201d at the top of the game. \u201cThe football comes first no matter what, no matter who\u2019s in charge, who\u2019s playing \u2026 and it feels like now is a good time for players to speak up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lucy Bronze, seen here during a pre-season match in Sydney, believes moving WSL matches to Stamford Bridge is a statement of intent from Chelsea. Photograph: Ayush Kumar\/Eurasia Sport Images\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

A summer with no major international women\u2019s tournament has given Bronze time to focus on some of the issues she is most passionate about. \u201cI\u2019ve been trying to go to Colombia for four years to do stuff with refugees,\u201d says Bronze, who was asked to help with fundraising for the UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency) during Covid and has been involved since. She says, with a wry smile: \u201cSarina [the England head coach, Sarina Wiegman] is the one who\u2019s always blocked it because she said that she didn\u2019t want me travelling there before a tournament and getting jet-lagged, especially before the World Cup in Australia. She blocked it then and she blocked it before the Euros because we didn\u2019t have a lot of time. She was like: \u2018Lucy, it\u2019s not a good idea for your body.\u2019 So, that\u2019s been planned for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trip to Colombia, which according to the UNHCR is facing a humanitarian crisis and has about 2.8 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants and seven million people who are internally displaced, was worth the Wiegman-enforced wait.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was crazy,\u201d she says. \u201cI had had a bit of the background explained to me beforehand. A lot of people don\u2019t necessarily know so much. I guess now that there\u2019s been the earthquake in Venezuela people know a bit more, but it\u2019s generally not spoken about as much because it\u2019s Venezuela to Colombia compared to like, Ukrainians to wealthier countries like England or Germany.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing on the ground and especially around kids was special. They don\u2019t know why they\u2019re in that position and it\u2019s not their fault, it\u2019s just the life that\u2019s been put in front of them and they just make the most of the smallest of things. It was a tiring time, emotionally and physically, but it was powerful seeing so much good work being done too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experiencing the resilience and joy of children in the worst of circumstances is \u201creally moving\u201d says Bronze. \u201cAt the same time, when we went to leave, there were kids saying: \u2018Take me with you,\u2019 which is really devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Lucy Bronze has had the time to focus on some of the issues she is most passionate about this summer. Photograph: Tom Jenkins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Bronze went with shirts, including some from Girma. \u201cThere was a refugee girl there who was the captain of this football team which was all boys,\u201d says Bronze. \u201cNay\u2019s [Girma\u2019s] parents were refugees too. So I told this girl Nay\u2019s story, and this kid\u2019s face just lit up. I showed her pictures of Nay playing for America and I gave her her shirt. This girl was so excited because while it\u2019s not someone in the exact same situation, it\u2019s someone whose family had to rebuild their lives and she could see her own life in it and how amazing she\u2019s doing now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Helping people on and off the pitch gives Bronze energy. There is excitement for the new season with Chelsea\u2019s changed and young team under Sonia Bompastor after a high-energy pre-season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like it\u2019s taken Sonia till now to do everything she\u2019s wanted to do behind the scenes, in terms of her staff and putting the trust into her staff to do the things that are part of her vision,\u201d Bronze says. \u201cThere\u2019s been a hard transition and balance to find what makes Chelsea so good and so dominant and so \u2018Chelsea\u2019, while also evolving and adapting, because that\u2019s what you have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

That hampered them last season, Bronze thinks: \u201cThe first year everything kind of went smoothly. As things started to change, we were so desperate to win because we are Chelsea \u2013 we need to win \u2013 but at the same time, it was about [how] we do that while evolving and I think that\u2019s maybe what we struggled with in the second half of last season.\u201d<\/p>\n

There have been big changes off the pitch too, with all Women\u2019s Super League games to be played at Stamford Bridge, starting with Aston Villa next Saturday, and cup games at AFC Wimbledon\u2019s the Cherry Red Records Stadium. \u201cIt\u2019s a statement of intent on the future of Chelsea\u2019s women\u2019s team,\u201d says Bronze.<\/p>\n

\u201cChelsea have been this dominant team on the pitch but now we need to dominate in every aspect. Not just in winning the league six times in a row \u2013 that is fantastic \u2013 but we need to win the Champions League, we need to grow as a team, we need to grow in the way that we play and the people that we bring in and we need to have a stadium that represents that ambition. Everything contributes.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was amended on 29 August 2026. An earlier version said Chelsea would be playing their home cup games at Kingsmeadow, Norbiton; in fact, they will play at Wimbledon\u2019s the Cherry Red Records Stadium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lucy Bronze does not stop. Her brain runs a hundred miles a minute. She does not need traditional…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-753663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}