“They got in touch when I was 16. I turned round and said to my mum: ‘If I don’t make the England team before my 22nd birthday, I’m off to play for Portugal.’”

It is hard to imagine Lucy Bronze pulling on another international shirt, or how close England came to letting the player now widely considered to be the best defender in the world slip through their fingers. But Bronze’s senior call-up was a long time coming and, with a Portuguese father, Joaquim, she had options.

Bronze played for England at all youth levels from under-17 to under-23 and was part of the teams that reached the Under-17 World Cup semi-finals and won the 2009 Under-19 European Championship. But the call to join the senior side did not come.

“I was doing everything I could,” the 27-year-old says. “I was playing well, I thought I deserved a call-up and it took a long, long time. It wasn’t as easy when I was younger as it is now for these young ‘uns, but I fought my way into the squad. England was always the dream but I knew I could go and play for Portugal and I would have loved it as much.”

When she finally secured her first cap she was four months short of her 22nd birthday and the deadline she had put on her England dream. Not that it mattered to her parents; it was never a competition. “My mum always just says: ‘Whatever makes you happy.’ My dad wasn’t bothered either.”

On Tuesday England face Portugal and Bronze will get to play against the country she could have been representing. The trip to Setúbal, just south of Lisbon, means for the first time her Portuguese family will watch her play for her country of birth.

“My dad’s flying across and he’s basically taking all his family, so my auntie, my uncle, my grandma and some of my dad’s cousins are coming,” Bronze says.

“In my time with England we’ve played them once and I didn’t get to play. We’ve never played in Portugal and my Portuguese family have never watched me in an England shirt so obviously I’m excited for that. But it’s the same when I play in the north-east.”

Bronze, a product of Sunderland’s academy, got that chance on Saturday when England faced Brazil at Middlesbrough. She was presented with her Uefa player of the year and World Cup silver ball trophies before the frustrating 2-1 defeat. “That was the first time I’ve even seen the silver ball,” she says. “I’d not even seen it or had it since the World Cup. I was actually asking where was it and then they just walked out with it, so I was like: ‘At least I know where it is now.’”

She says the defeat was disappointing but Bronze is confident the goals will start flowing more freely for England. “We just need to be playing more games together,” the right-back says. “We’ve had players in and out. So we’ve got to develop that understanding together. It started to click, but it’s just the end product still.”