Lucy Bronze on using music to handle pressure and build connections 🎶 | OneFootball

Lucy Bronze is no stranger to pressure.

Throughout her career, the Barcelona and England right-back has played in World Cup finals, Champions League finals and countless other matches where trophies and reputations were on the line.

At the highest level of football, pressure is always there, and it’s how you deal with it that often defines you as a player.

This Sunday, Bronze and her Barcelona team-mates will come under pressure again when they take on Real Madrid in El Clásico, with just three points separating the two great rivals at the top of the Liga F table.

Ahead of this mouthwatering clash, FC Barcelona official automotive and mobility partner CUPRA have collaborated with Lucy for their Let Music Move You campaign – a collaborative campaign with suicide prevention charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) which aims to harness the therapeutic power of music to help people tune into their mental wellbeing and not suffer in silence.

Bronze explains how music has helped her deal with nerves and pressure throughout her career.

“It’s interesting the pressures that you have, particularly before a game, and the outside noise hypothetically and literally,” says Bronze.

“You’re on the bus or in the car and there’s hundreds of fans cheering and shouting and you can hear that noise and that energy, which is good but there’s times where it can be too much.

“Put your music on and it completely changes the zone and the environment that you’re in. It can take away that pressure, it can make you feel calm again.”

Bronze has played club football in England, France and now Spain, encountering different people from different backgrounds and cultures along the way.

And she explains how music can also be a great tool for breaking down barriers and building connections.

“Travelling so much and being in so many different countries, even from the age of 17, I would thank music for the connections it helped me make when I probably was very shy,” she says.

“It helps you connect with players that maybe you don’t have another way to connect with. You can’t speak the same language and the connections I’ve been able to make through music, they really kickstarted every environment that I’ve ever been in.”

Music undoubtedly has a transportive quality too and cars are often cited as the most popular place for people to listen to their favourite tunes, with studies showing that 40% of drivers play music to relax and manage stress.

At the age of 32, Bronze says she still uses the music she enjoyed as a child as a beacon of light in times of darkness.

“I have different playlists,” she says.

“Throwback music from when I was in the car with my parents going to training, so then in moments when I’m feeling stressed or maybe down or maybe I’m missing home, there’s a playlist that I go to and these songs are just the songs that take me back to happy memories that completely takes you away into a different world.”

Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) exists to unite everyone against suicide. Every week 125 people in the UK take their own lives. CALM exists to change this by offering life-saving services, provoking national conversation, and bringing people together to reject living miserably through culture, music and sport.