Aston Villa's Rachel Daly targeting World Cup glory

Daly and the Lionesses booked a showdown with Spain on Sunday thanks a superb 3-1 success over co-hosts Australia in front of a capacity crowd of 75,784 in Sydney.

Ella Toone put England 1-0 up after 36 minutes with Australia captain Sam Kerr equalising with a stunning individual goal after the break, before strikes from Lauren Hemp and Alessia Russo sealed the deal.

The victory means England will play in a first football World Cup final since the men’s side won the 1966 tournament on home soil.

And as she targets success against Spain, Daly hit back at some of England’s critics, who called for more goals after two grinding wins against Haiti and Denmark in the group stages.

The Lionesses wing-back said the team always had an inner belief and have grown into the tournament.

She said: “I’m delighted. It shows the absolute resilience and character of this squad. It was a tough game, like our previous games. There was a lot of criticism early doors about England only winning 1-0 against Haiti and Denmark, but looking back, they weren’t so bad after all, were they?

“But we’re growing into the tournament, we’ve got one more to go, the biggest one, but we’ve got to enjoy it and go again on Sunday.

“The inner belief we have in this team is frightening. We don’t tend to listen to the outside noise.

“Credit to Australia and the support, it’s been fantastic, but as a team, we’ve got that inner belief. We know we’re going to grow and come into this tournament and develop in each game and we showed that.

“There’s one more to go, we can’t get ahead of ourselves. It’s a massive game.”

Victorious England coach Sarina Wiegman has questioned whether she is “in a fairytale” after guiding England to their first Women’s World Cup final.

Wiegman will now appear in a fourth successive final as a head coach after winning the 2017 Women’s Euros with the Netherlands, who she managed in the World Cup final defeat to the United States two years later, before she led England to European glory last summer.

Speaking after the semi-final, Wiegman said: “We achieved the final and it’s unbelievable, it feels like we’ve won it.

“But we won this game, it’s an incredible stadium, an away game, of course it was a hard game but again we found a way to win.

“We scored three goals, in this team that ruthlessness, whether it’s up front or in defence we really want to keep the ball out of the net, we really want to win and we stick together. We stick to the plan and it worked again.”

She added: “The chance as a coach you make it to two finals is really special, I never take anything for granted but I’m like – am I in a fairytale or something?”

“I can hardly describe how proud I am of the team.”